
Gass T E\4-sS 
Book ^"B>6S 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 



HISTORY, CHARACTER AND UTILITY; 



EEISG THE 



SUBSTANCE OF TWO LECTURES 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



VOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION OF THE CITY OF ALBANY. 



BY S. DE WITT BLOODGOOD. 



ALBANY : 

PUBLISHED BY OLIVER STEELE 
J. 3Iunscll, P r inter . 

1838. 



INSCRIBED 
TO THE YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION 

OP THE CITY OF ALBANY, 



The writer of this, having been struck 
with the importance of giving that class 
of internal improvements, called roads, a 
due share of public consideration, at a time 
when so many projects are on foot, some 
of them addressed to the cupidity of specula- 
tion, others to advance the common welfare, 
recently attempted to investigate the sub- 
ject, and to form some general opinions of its 
history, and characteristics. 

No where could this information be ob- 
tained in the desired shape. And it was 
only after long and laborious researches 
that the scanty facts were obtained which 
form the groundwork of this little treatise. 

Modern engineers have rather embodied 
their own experience in works relating to 



VL INTRODUCTION. 

particular projects under their charge, than 
discussed the general tendency of the sys- 
tem. Sir Henry Parnell, of the Institution 
of Civil Engineers, in London, has given 
us the most valuable work we possess of 
a general character, but he has not at- 
tempted to enter into those details which 
were found interesting enough, in our 
opinion, to justify their collection in the 
following pages. 

If a general view of the subject, if its 
literary as well as mechanical history is 
worthy of being rescued from the dust of 
centuries, the writer hopes that his humble 
efforts will not be entirely in vain. 

Albany^ October^ 1838. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 



It is conceded that no age of the world 
was ever marked by a greater regard for 
the useful than that in which we live. The 
monuments of antiquity, grand and impres- 
sive even in their ruins, seem as often to have 
been erected through caprice as for utility. 
The pyramids survive triumphantly the ra- 
vages of time, but why such a vast expense 
was incurred of labor and of money, is one 
of the problems yet to be solved, and one 
that overtasks the most willing antiquarian. 
In our own time all popular pursuits appear 
to be influenced, if not directed, by a regard 
for the human condition and the desire of 
making it more in accordance with the true 
objects of life. The projector who cannot 
(apparently at least) demonstrate this to be 
the purpose of his schemes, is sure to be 
without patronage, and almost without hear- 



8 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

ers. Even those articles of fancy and taste, 
once the exclusive property of the rich and 
great, but now obtained and enjoyed by the 
community at large, make their appeal to 
some principle of utility as their chief recom- 
mendation. 

It is from this tendency of the age, that so 
much investigation, so much research, so 
much talent, has been displayed in popular 
forms, and sought each its reward in the 
practical advantages it conferred through a 
new medium on a new auditory. And it 
is from the consciousness of the truth of this 
feature of our times, that we venture to pass 
over more amusing themes, for one which is 
intimately connected with the comfort of in- 
dividuals and the prosperity of nations. 

The history of roads, those means of land 
communication, indispensable to civiliza- 
tion ; without which mankind, and even those 
of the same country, would live strangers to 
each other ; the absence of which is a sure 
evidence of barbarism, and whose mainten- 
ance and preservation are infallible tests of 
national prosperity, is a field vast enough 
for the ambition of the most successful 
writer. As at intervals these researches 
were prosecuted, they grew in interest and 
magnitude, and it is regretted after all that 



TREATISE ON ROADS, y 

the following pages will only present an out- 
line of a subject, connected with the most 
remarkable periods of antiquity, their social, 
commercial and political relations, and which 
in our own time has assumed a still more im- 
portant and interesting character. 

When the celebrated Dr. Johnson de- 
clared, as he was whirled along in a post 
chaise over the beautiful roads of England, 
that he was enjoying one of the greatest 
pleasures of life, he overlooked the happi- 
ness, which the existence of good roads con- 
fers on those who do not travel, but who re- 
ceive at their own doors, all that necessity 
demands, all that comfort requires, all that 
taste can sigh for. Human existence is plea- 
sant or painful as its wants are satisfied or 
denied, and of course that system of internal 
communication which provides for them, be- 
comes one of the first cares of civilized soci- 
ety, one of the great objects of all intelligent 
legislation. 

In the savage state, the entire freedom of 
the individual, that natural liberty which 
does away with all restraints of law, and all 
subjection of our passions to reason, is ac- 
companied by the most miserable depend- 
ence on circumstances. Nature, whose gifts 
2 



10 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

when cultivated and enjoyed, becomes the 
kind mother of the industrious and the pro- 
vident, is to uncivilized man, at best but a 
fickle friend, and oftentimes a relentless en- 
emy. 

The wind which fills the canvass of the 
deep laden bark, and bears to its destined 
port the rich and useful products of other 
lands, tears down the wigwam of the sav- 
age and leaves him exposed and shelterless. 
The prosperous gale becomes the pitiless 
blast. The early and the latter rain which 
makes the husbandman rejoice in the bounty 
of Providence ; which fills the reservoir, and 
impels the untiring wheel of the manufactur- 
er, inundates the habitation of the aboriginal, 
swells the flood, over which he would pass, 
and deprives him of the scanty sustenance 
derived from his spear and his bow. Man 
in this state of existence becomes a wander- 
er. He must go to the tree or the fountain, 
to the lake or the hill side, where for a time 
he satiates his hunger and quenches his thirst. 
As the supply diminishes, at the greatest 
personal inconvenience he is obliged to seek 
some other spot where he may prolong his 
life. His food must be run down on the prai- 
rie from the herds, which nomades like him- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 11 

self, have a wild and uncertain existence, or 
drawn at times from ice-bound lakes, with 
slow and painful exertion. The tribe of 
which he is a member cannot establish their 
residence any where permanently, if they 
would. Their sustenance must be sought, 
where it can be found, since it cannot be 
conveyed to them, and their surplus for 
the moment, hid in the earth for future ne- 
cessity, generally becomes the prey of other 
tribes, or of the quick scented animals, which 
follow on the trail. Life is consumed in a 
struggle for life, and the nobler qualities of 
our nature have no time for expansion, and 
no place for improvement. Without perma- 
nence of habitation and constant facilities for 
intercommunication, no progress in civiliza- 
tion can be counted on. 

All travellers tell us that the native tribes 
of uncivilized lands, are constantly exposed 
to the horrors of starvation ; while political 
economists appeal triumphantly in their ar- 
guments in favor of commercial intercourse, 
to the fact that in refined and civilized na 
tions, famine is now unknown. The start- 
ling and affecting pictures such as are pre- 
sented to us by Captain Back, and Wash- 
ington Irving, in their most recent works, of 



12 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

the frequent horrors which attend the north- 
ern and northwestern tribes, and arise from 
the scantiness or uncertainty of their sup- 
plies of food, are unfortunately too common, 
and the eye of humanity cannot glance at 
the great mass of mankind, and notice the 
millions and millions of our race living in 
anarchy, in poverty, and in ignorance, with- 
out shedding a tear of compassion over their 
strange and hapless destiny. Nor is it 
merely in regard to the physical condition 
of man, that the absence of intercommunica- 
tion as enjoyed in civilized countries, is so 
great a misfortune. To the early settler 
who finds the dangerous river, the stormy 
flood, and the trackless forest interposing in- 
superable obstacles to the transportation of 
food, and to the poor savage who after kil- 
ling his game, is unable to carry it to the 
tent where his wife and children are dying 
of hunger, other and more valuable benefits 
are denied by the absence of those improve- 
ments which distinguish the civilized state. 
Animal existence most concerns the barba- 
rian, but among men in civilized life, it is but 
an accessary to the growth of the higher 
principles of our nature. In a constant 
struggle against the elements for the"support 



TREATISE ON ROADS. .13 

of life, its nobler objects are lost sight of, or 
unappreciated, and it is a matter of fact, 
that those nations are most degraded, whose 
means of subsistence are the most precari- 
ous. It would be a curious subject of en- 
quiry to ascertain and compare the relative 
degrees of civilization to be found in those 
countries, which are partially or wholly defi- 
cient in the means of intercommunication. A 
table might be formed with considerable ac- 
curacy which would shew their actual con- 
dition by means of this test. The most bar- 
barous people will be found to be those, 
among whom the system of roads, bridges 
and canals, and the facilities of transporta- 
tion are unknown. On the contrary, the 
most enlightened and the most prosperous, 
are those whose inhabitants live in the clos- 
est connections, social and commercial, whose 
territory is intersected in all directions by 
well constructed and densely thronged ave- 
nues, and whose means of travel and of 
trade, have bound its inhabitants in friend- 
ship, and the ties of interest. 

Let us elucidate this principle by reference 
to well known facts. Even to civilized na- 
tions, those indeed having extensive domains, 
and great political connections, it will be 



14 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

found applicable. We are all familiar with 
the history and resources of Spain. That 
country which by turns has been the thea- 
tre of Roman, Moorish and Gallic conquest, 
though the land of the olive and the vine, and 
the home of the richly freighted galleons, is 
still the scene of ignorance and poverty. It 
has not improved the advantages, nor over- 
come the disadvantages of nature. "No man" 
says a recent distinguished traveller, " but 
a botanist can travel with any pleasure 
through the barren tracts of old Castile." 
The easy prosecution of internal improve- 
ments is unquestionably rendered difficult 
by the character of the surface, but the Spa- 
nish government at one time projected a 
grand canal to connect the Mediterranean 
with the Bay of Biscay, by the route of As- 
turias, old Castile and Arragon. Only a 
small portion of this work was ever finished, 
and the transactions connected with it are 
of course very limited. This is almost a so- 
litary effort on their part to facilitate their 
internal navigation. The main roads to the 
capitol and some of the chief towns, are kept 
in good order, as a well understood matter 
of necessity, but the general communications 
of the country, and those by which the trans- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 15 

portation of goods is effected, are little else 
than the imprinted footsteps of the weary 
mules, upon the rough rocks which they are 
compelled to climb. The consequences of this 
state of things are apparent in the difficulty 
and danger of conveying merchandize from 
one part of Spain to the other, the heavy 
and ruinous charges made by the carriers 
for their services, the temptations to plunder 
afforded by the insecurity of the routes, and 
the scarcity, and dearness of a vast propor- 
tion of the articles indispensable to the com- 
forts of life. 

On a recent occasion, when a supply of 
grain was required by the government at 
Madrid, it took 30,000 horses and mules to 
transport 480 tons of wheat from old Castile 
to that city. On a good turnpike road, this 
would have easily been accomplished by one 
sixth of that number of animals; on a canal 
at a speed of four miles an hour, by about 
fifteen, on a rail way, by the exertions of two 
locomotive engines of the first class. 

The city of Cadiz though founded 1200 
years before the Christian era, contains even 
now but 60,000 inhabitants, and though ad- 
mirably situated for foreign trade and so far 
coming within the general law which causes 



16 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

the rise of towns and cities, and which we 
shall presently notice, yet for the want of pro- 
per channels of communication with the inte- 
rior, and the oppressive duties charged upon 
articles of merchandize every time they 
change hands, it never can become as popu- 
lous or important as those great European 
and American towns which are centres of in- 
numerable avenues, the points in which the 
vivifying rays of commerce are concentrated. 
On the other hand, Switzerland, a moun- 
tainous and sterile country, with only about 
19,000 square miles of territory and 2,000,- 
000 of inhabitants, while Spain possesses an 
area of 179,000 square miles and 41,000,000 
of inhabitants, is essentially prosperous, in 
consequence of its internal communications, 
and the facilities they afford for traA^elling, 
and the export of domestic industry. The 
celebrated military road called the Simplon, 
which wall preserve the memory of Napo- 
leon, longer perhaps than even his famous 
battles, has produced the most important 
commercial advantages to the Helvetians. 
Another over the Splugen, the work of the 
Austrians since the death of Napoleon, and 
designed to facilitate the communication be- 
tween Lombardy and the Tyrol has also had 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 17 

the most decided influence on their prosperi- 
ty. The two cantons of Uri and Tessino 
completed about seven years since, a fine 
avenue over St. Gothard, and indeed good 
roads are every where carried to the very 
tops of the Swiss mountains. Industry has 
thus found an outlet, and the very attrac- 
tions of the scenery thus rendered accessible 
to the curious, form an item of the national 
prosperity that would scarcely be believed, 
were it not for unquestionable evidence. 

The condition of society under a system 
of intercommunication rises at once to the 
highest degree of refinement, and the great- 
est equality of advantages. The most dis- 
tant places, are to all desired intents, com- 
pletely united. The products of every na- 
tion, the fruits of every clime, come within 
reach of all. The pleasures of social inter- 
course, the beneficial discoveries of science, 
the offerings of genius, and the works of art, 
become part and parcel of his enjoyment, 
who lives within the circle of civilization, 
penetrated by these lines of commercial in- 
tercourse. The inhabitants of the torrid 
and the temperate zones, exchange with ea- 
gerness the surplus of their respective pro- 
ducts. No one need be beyond the reach of 
3 



18 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

sympathy or companionship. The loneliest 
inhabitant, whose possession is crossed by a 
canal or rail-road, becomes in fact a citizen 
of the world. 

It is impossible not to be struck with the 
moral effect of such a state of things. The 
bonds of human fellowship become closer 
and dearer to us, the friendly relations which 
Christianity teaches us, are strengthened and 
maintained. 

" The kindred sons of men 

Live brothers like, in amity combined." 

Before we proceed to examine the history 
of roads, it may be well to glance briefly at 
the principles to which they owe their origin, 
and some of the benefits of their construc- 
tion. It is evident, on the discovery or early 
settlement of any country, that the first ef- 
forts of the founders to establish colonies, 
are made at the sea side, or on the banks 
of navigable rivers. These are the only 
localities easily accessible to foreign com- 
merce, or the trade of the interior, and thus 
all great cities and towns generally owe 
their rise to their facilities for water com- 
munication. This fact is pointed out by all 
political economists, and in this necessity, 
they recognize the choice usually first made 
by colonists. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 19 

When a city or town is thus established, 
its subsequent growth still depends on the 
ease with which it can be approached, and 
the extent of country which can readily find 
there an outlet for its productions. In bar- 
barous ages, the protection of a castle and 
the favor of a chieftain sometimes congrega- 
ted men in hamlets beneath a lordly battle- 
ment, but where civilization extends her ae- 
gis over her followers, men cannot be kept 
together in large masses, for the mere and 
single purpose of personal safety. They re- 
sort to populous towns, and towms become 
populous because they are the marts of en- 
terprise. Here, we see the advantages of the 
subdivision of labor, and the increased pro- 
duction and sale of those articles which min- 
ister to our real or im aginary wants. Here, 
industry moves on the largest scale, the arts 
flourish in the highest degree, and the com- 
forts of life are most easily attainable. In 
the competition of intelligence and talent, 
great designs are brought forward to public 
observation, great public benefits are secured, 
and the highest rewards held out to perseve- 
rance and industry. Talent generally re- 
pairs to the largest theatre of action ; and 
the eagerness of adventure, and the rapid 



20 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

advancement of enterprise, draw crowds of 
combatants into the already thronged arena. 

When cities become so large however, as 
to require new and more steady supplies, 
than at their outset, — whether for manufac- 
ture, export or subsistence, then it is the ex- 
tension and improvement of internal commu- 
nications become indispensible to further 
prosperity. There seems to be a reciprocal 
action. Towns require the construction of 
roads, and roads lead to the increase of 
towns. They are the artificial substitutes 
for water communication, and by bringing 
the productions of the surrounding country 
to market, induce competition, and give the 
citizen his necessary supplies, at cheaper 
rates, and in more convenient quantities. 

The surrounding country becomes equally 
benefitted. The remote sections are brought 
upon an equality with those nearer, by the re- 
duction of the expense and difficulty of land 
carriage, and thus gain a market they could 
not otherwise profitably visit. I^ands that 
could not before be worked with any prospect 
of sufficient remuneration, become valuable to 
their owners and beneficial to the public. The 
influence that large towns exercise upon agri- 
cultural pursuits, is well understood. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 21 

"In those districts," says a modern writer, 
'• which carry on a communication with the 
markets of trading towns, the husbandmen 
are busy and skilful, the farmers industri- 
ous, the land is managed to the best advan- 
tage and double the quantity of grain or 
herbage (articles ultimately converted into 
human provision) raised from it, of what 
the same soil yields in remoter and more neg- 
lected parts of the country." "Agriculture 
never arrives at any considerable, much less 
its highest degree of perfection, when not 
connected with trade, that is, when the pro- 
duce is not increased by the consumption of 
trading cities." Nor are the benefits confer- 
red by these " greatest of all improvements" 
confined exclusively in their operation, to 
town and country only. They are equally 
striking, by the effect they produce in the 
relations between district and district. Ar- 
ticles of necessity however bulky, are easily 
transported to be manufactured or consum- 
ed. The products of the soil, of the rivers, 
and the mountains, are interchanged at will, 
and the gifts of heaven which w"ould oth- 
erwise often be unappreciated and unim- 
proved become the valuable resources of the 
human family. 



22 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

The diminution of the expense of trans- 
portation is also an important consideration, 
since all the saving effected in the cost of 
transportation to market, is so much profit 
left in the pocket of the producer. 

The advantage of being able to convey 
any required product, to the place where it 
is in demand, and within the period of its 
greatest value, lessens the risk of produc- 
tion, and gives certainty to the calculations 
of industry. In the conveyance of news and 
of private correspondence, the utility of roads 
is strikingly evident, and particularly that 
of rail ways, a simple yet admirable inven- 
tion which leaves the most remarkable ef- 
forts of the ancients far behind. The sepa- 
ration of friends and relations becomes almost 
nominal, the sympathies of life are uninter- 
rupted by distance, and all the joys of affec- 
tion and the sweets of remembrance multi- 
ply in the pleasing assurances, which their 
swift messenger, so faithfully conveys to the 
absent. 

In a military point of view, good roads 
are of essential service. It is too apparent 
to need any proof, that the rapid transmis- 
sion of troops from one point to another is of 
the highest importance to any belligerent 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 23 

country. If during the second war of in- 
dependence, our present system of canals 
and rail roads had been established, im- 
mense savings might have been made in the 
expense of transportation; and the same num- 
ber of men might have been used oftener at 
different points and doubled in efficiency. In 
any future contest, the advantages w^ill be 
perceived in the most striking manner. 

These topics at which we have only 
glanced, are fruitful subjects for reflection, 
and deserve a more deliberate examination 
than our limit enables us to give them. 

The early history of roads is somewhat 
obscure. In tracing it out, we naturally 
turn to the oldest records in the hands of 
men, to see what is there said of them. 
The commerce of the east appears to have 
been carried on by means of ships and ca- 
ravans, and allusions to these are frequent 
in the early writers. We find that the 
Egyptians pursued the retreating Israelites 
with chariots, which is perhaps the most 
ancient notice we have of their general use. 
Among the Jews the absence of commercial 
regulations, in the laws promulgated by Mo- 
ses, was doubtless owing to the necessity of 
keeping that people separate as much as 



24 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

' possible from the idolatrous nations around 

them. 

In the time of Solomon immense numbers 
of these chariots were imported from Egypt. 
The numbers are stated with precision by 
the early historians, and the fact of their 
use, in default of other evidence, would be 
conclusive as to the existence and maintain- 
ance of public roads. Two great routes 
from Palestine to Egypt, the one along the 
Mediterranean from Gaza to Pelusium, and 
another from the same place to the Arabi- 
an gulf, are spoken of as being constantly 
thronged by travellers. 

On the downfal of the Israelites after 
the death of Solomon, occasioned by various 
causes foreign and domestic, Tyre became 
the emporium of the eastern world. Besides 
her foreign commerce which was already so 
extensive as to have attracted the attention 
of the inspired prophets, and to have pro- 
cured for her the title of " a merchant of the 
people for many isles," her internal trade 
was of the greatest extent. Her principal 
connections were with Egypt, Assyria, and 
the Caucasian countries, while the tin of 
Britain and the silks of China were also 
found in her marts. When the walls of 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 25 

Rome were so diminutive that they could be 
easily leaped over, Tyre was in the " blaze 
of her fame." While her vessels whitened 
the adjacent seas, her caravans threaded 
the interior. The trade of Phenicia has gi- 
ven occasion to some very profound research- 
es of which the pages of Heeren furnish a 
masterly example. The celebrated city of 
Petra, recently so well described by our 
countryman Mr. Stevens, became a city of 
immense wealth, from the mere circumstance 
of the meeting of the caravan roads in its vi- 
cinity, and its being the emporium for the 
supplies of Arabia. 

Babylonia or Chaldea, a province of As- 
syria, which also like its later rival Tyre 
has yielded to time and prophecy, was also 
remarkable for its commerce, and the nume- 
rous commercial roads, by which the city of 
Babylon gathered in the products of sur- 
rounding countries. One celebrated route 
ran along the southern boundary of the de- 
sert between Persia and Medea to the Cas- 
pian Gates, a celebrated Asiatic defile ; and 
thence along the Hyrcanian and Parthian 
mountains to Bactria. It is said to have been 
used by Alexander in his celebrated expedi- 
tion against the Bactrians, and is styled by 

4 



26 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 



Arrian a Greek geographer, the great mili- 
tary road. The principal commercial route 
from Babylon to India was in part the 
same, but at Aria it took an easterly di- 
rection and afterwards divided into three 
branches. Other roads are mentioned which 
ran to the Mediterranean, and to important 
towns in Asia Minor. Semiramis, who if not 
the founder of Babylon, was the creator of 
its commerce and its splendor, particularly 
directed her attention to the construction of 
roads and bridges, which according to Stra- 
bo were of " wonderful structure." 

There is evidence of the existence of re- 
gularly constructed roads in Asia of great 
extent, divided into stations, at w^hich the 
most spacious inns were erected for the se- 
curity of travellers. That from Susa a sea 
port of Tunis to Sardis, a town a little east 
of Smyrna, traversed a distance of 312 miles, 
and had no less than 111 of these caravan- 
seras. 

Among the eastern nations celebrated for 
their internal commerce, was Arabia, situa- 
ted between the Red sea, the Persian gulf 
and the Mediterranean, and thus peculiarly 
situated to enjoy a carrying trade. 

The principal mode adopted by the Asia- 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 



27 



tic and African merchants for the transport- 
ation of merchandize, was that of caravans, 
and the use of them has continued to this 
very day. Travellers who describe them, 
present us a picture of eastern customs, 
which carries back the mind to the earli- 
est periods of Eastern history. The camel, 
that ship of the desert, the gift of heaven to 
eastern nations alone, still forms their chief 
dependence in their internal trade. Those 
who w^ish to learn the details of caravan 
travelling, will find them fully described by 
Niebuhr, and Buckhardt, 

The routes now followed in Africa, are no 
less than seven in number, occupying from 
30 to 119 days, and traversed frequently by 
as many as 2000 camels. The principal ar- 
ticles of traffic are Indian goods, slaves, gold 
dust, drugs and ivory. The principal cara- 
van route is from Nubia to Cairo. Another 
is that from Damascus to Mecca, and Cairo 
to Mecca. Into the great caravans, smaller 
ones are continually merging as they move 
along, and the mixture of business and reli- 
gion allowed by the Koran, keeps Asia and 
Africa dusty with the feet of merchant pil- 
grims. The limits necessarily assigned to 
this treatise, compel us to turn wdtli reluc- 
tance from this interesting portion of the 
subject. 



28 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

The states of Greece, which are always 
the favorite haunts of the classical antiqua- 
rian, do not furnish the same field to the 
utilitarian, as to the lover of the fine arts. 
Something is to be allowed to their peculiar 
position, when it is known that their trade 
was chiefly maritime, and their roads were 
of secondary consequence. We have am- 
ple descriptions of their temples, their fleets, 
their public men, their domestic manners, 
and their foreign wars, but it is almost im- 
possible to ascertain with minuteness the 
character of their inland communications. 
The road from Athens to the Pireus, its 
artificial sea port, and the sacred road to El- 
eusis are often alluded to, and the former is 
particularly described. There was plenty of 
material for the construction of roads. The 
quarries still remain, out of which, though 
towns and cities were for ages hewn, as ma- 
ny more might yet be constructed. Contin- 
ental Greece appears to have been a collec- 
tion of basins of level land surrounded by 
lofty and romantic mountains. Each basin 
shut out from the other, seemed naturally to 
form an independent territory, and commu- 
nicated only by the natural outlets through 
the mountains. The roads ran through these 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 



29 



defiles, and over the plains, very much as they 
now do. Indeed from their present character 
and appearance, we are led to infer that they 
were generally causeways of stone rather 
roughly laid, with a narrow surface. 

Tournefort however tells us, that he found 
in the island of Cos, now Stanco, in the Ege- 
an sea, a road that ran from lolis to Carthea, 
paved with regular polygons, supported by 
a strong wall, and this again protected by 
immense blocks of coping. He succeeded in 
tracing it for three miles. The roads lead- 
ing from Athens to the country, were bor- 
dered with statues and monumental erec- 
tions in honor of the great men of the coun- 
try. There, the effigies of the illustrious met 
the eye of the traveller, and reminded him, 
if he had forgotten it, of the respect due to 
great and virtuous actions. 

Pausanias a celebrated traveller of Cappa- 
docia who flourished in the second century, 
and left behind him a description of Greece 
made from personal observation, gives us 
many particulars of a highly interesting na- 
ture. He mentions the road leading from 
the Academy to one of the gates of the city, 
as being lined with public sepulchres. Not 
the least of those thus honored with monu- 



30 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

merits at the public charge, was Thrasybu- 
lus, the conqueror of the thirty tyrants, who 
for this service boldly planned, and bravely 
executed, refused to receive any other re- 
ward, than two twigs of the olive entwined 
in a simple wreath. The names of Pericles, 
of ApoUodorus, Timotheus, Zeno, Nicias and 
Aristogiton, all highly interesting and dis- 
tinguished characters, were also found by the 
traveller inscribed with equal care in the 
same vicinity. Among other roads men- 
tioned by him. is one which ran from the 
forum in Sparta to another place called 
Booneta, celebrated as the Aphetean road,* 
so named after a port of Thessaly, upon 
which, Ulysses ran a race against other 
competitors, and won the hand of the far 
famed and faithful Penelope. 

Perhaps there was no part of Greece 
where a good road would have been more 
advantageous to the country, than across 
the isthmus of Corinth. On looking at the 
map it will be perceived, that such a road 
would cut off a tedious navigation round the 
Morea, uniting the gulfs of Lepanto and 
Egina. The distance across is only four or 
five miles, and the ancients traversed it in 
preference to sailing round. Nero it is said, 

*NoTE.— Now Fetio. 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 31 

attempted to cut a canal through the isth- 
mus, but had only proceeded with the work 
for half a mile, when some disturbances at 
Rome prevented him from executing his de- 
sign. Some fears were entertained by co- 
temporary engineers, if such they might be 
termed, that the waters of the Ionian sea 
were higher than those of the Egean, and 
would overflow the islands in the gulf of Egi- 
" na, as well as the low land of the isthmus. 
Corinth, which principally benefitted by this 
inland traflSc, became possessed of immense 
wealth, and a decided influence over the 
other Grecian states. When the Romans 
sacked it, 146 years before the Christian era, 
they were astonished at the vastness of their 
booty. 

As these warlike people extended their 
conquests to that part of the world already 
accustomed to the sway of foreigners, they 
carried with them the spirit of coloniza- 
tion. Greece was made a province, and was 
governed by a pro consul. Roads, as will 
presently be noticed, were immediately con- 
structed of such durability as to have lasted 
to the present day. That from Beirout to 
Mount Lebanon, built by the emperor Aure- 
lius, and called the Vi Antonina, is still to be 



32 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

traced, and the inscriptions commemorative 
of the event, may yet be seen engraved on 
the mountain heights along which it passes. 
Although the political economy of the 
Grecian states is but imperfectly known in 
those particulars which are connected with 
our subject, yet occasionally we find vesti- 
ges of customs, and relics of history, which 
enable us to grope our way with some de- 
gree of certainty. So the artist pronounces 
from the foot, that it is Hercules whose sta- 
tue is before him, and the geologist, from 
the scattered fragments of the fossil fish 
determines its structure and habits, when 
thousands of years ago it swam " the wa- 
ters like a thing of life." The care of the 
streets and highways in Thebes must have 
been committed to persons who were cho- 
sen for that purpose, although it is diflicult 
to tell in what manner they exercised their 
duties. For on one occasion, its ungrateful 
citizens by way of exhibitiug their contempt 
for their countryman Epaminondas, elected 
him a telearch, or cleaner of the streets, 
one of the lowest of their public offices. 
That illustrious person, pronounced by Ci- 
cero one of the greatest men of any age or 
nation, who had bled at Leuctra, and led his 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 



33 



countrymen to victory, was so unfortunate 
as to be unsuccessful in an attack upon Co- 
rinth, and thus lose their favor. He, who re- 
sisted the rich presents of a Persian monarch, 
though he lived a life of poverty and self de- 
nial, had not so secured the favor of the fickle 
crowd, as to escape their persecution and 
denunciation. Instead of complaining of the 
appointment which was intended to cover 
him wath contempt, he immediately entered 
upon its duties. In his opinion, even the hum- 
blest office claimed a faithful execution, and 
it is the province of genius to touch nothing 
that it does not adorn, Epaminondas, by this 
manly conduct, not only won the repentant 
love of the Thebans, but so elevated the 
character of the despised telearch, that the 
place afterw^ards was eagerly sought for, as 
a mark of honor, and the public favor.* 

The Roman roads are almost as familiar 
to the moderns, as those of their own times. 
When the whole world, as then known, was 
tributary to Rome, and her Eagles had been 
planted on the confines of Europe, Asia, and 
Africa, she took care to construct and main- 

*The new Greek government has recently employed itself in 
making a McAdamised road to the Pireus which is well spoken 
of. 

5 



34 TREATISE ON ROADS, 

tain roads in every country she had con- 
quered. In the time of Augustus, the lim- 
its of the empire on the west, were the 
Atlantic ocean, on the east the Euphrates, 
on the north the Danube and the Rhine, 
on the south the cataracts of the Nile, the 
African desert and the chain of Atlas. In- 
deed, every known country except ancient 
Caledonia, had yielded to her sway. The 
brave Highlanders, they could not subju- 
gate. Every lake was a Thrasymene, ev- 
ery pass a Thermopylae. 

It is not strange that with this boundless 
supremacy of the empire, the most lofty pre- 
tensions were made by her citizens. To 
maintain that supremacy, roads were es- 
teemed essentially necessary, and by them 
was kept up a constant communication with 
the remotest outposts. They were built at 
a vast expense, and kept up with unremit- 
ting care. We have minute details of the 
mode of their construction. Generally they 
were built of pebbles and gravel, or of large 
and unequally sized stones, something like 
our flagging, or of regular strata of different 
materials. Then there was a layer of bro- 
ken tile or earthern ware set in cement, 
then a bed of mortar, then an upper coat of 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 35 

hard material often consisting of large irre- 
gular polygons. These were so neatly joined 
together as to seem almost like one stone.* 
The width of these roads was usually about 
fourteen feet. They were elevated above 
the surface of the adjacent ground, and com- 
manded a view of the country. On each 
side was a path of large stones, called a mar- 
gin, intended for foot passengers, and edged 
with curb stones which kept them from be- 
ing used by carriages. The line of direc- 
tion was as straight as possible, rarely devi- 
ating even to avoid hills or marshes. Thir- 
ty-one of these roads more impoi'tant than 
any others, terminated in the city, and their 
point of union in the forum was marked by 
the erection of a gilt pillar, called Millia- 
rum Aureum, and placed there by the em- 
peror Augustus. Singular to relate, and in 
strong confirmation of the Roman historians, 
this very pillar was discovered in 1823 in 

*Some moderns describe with greater particularity the different 
kinds of roads in use among the Romans. Thus the stratas vias 
were only pebbles and gravel. 

The vias silice stratas, paved with large unequal stones, were a 
kind of flagged pavement, and the great military roads contained the 
various strata of material already mentioned. The following tech- 
nical terms are also given by the road builders to the different parts 
of the same road : stahimen, or foundation, ruderatio, the tile, nuc- 
leus the mortar, summa crusta the surface. 



36 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

that very forum. The public roads were 
called Consular or Pretorian, because con- 
structed under the direction of Consuls and 
Pretors at the public expense. The private 
ways were styled agrarian or vicinal. The 
miles were marked off by stones, numbered 
from the gates of the city, and in consequence 
the Latin word lapis, a stone, became syno- 
nymous with mile. 

From the great roads, others were made 
leading to unimportant places, to farms and 
villas. In order to secure the comfort of 
travellers, seats and stepping stones were 
placed at short intervals along the route, 
while taverns called caupones diversorise, 
and post houses called mansiones, or mu- 
tationes, were established about five miles 
apart. At the latter, as many as forty hors- 
es were kept at the expense of the govern- 
ment, for the transmission of intelligence, or 
the accommodation of those travellers who 
obtained the permission of the proper autho- 
rities, in a document called a diploma. In 
later times, two wheeled chariots called bi- 
gas, were maintained on the roads for the 
same purpose, and ancient paintings are pre- 
served, in which the mode of driving them, 
and the positions of the passengers are spirit- 
edly represented. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 37 

Such was the system prevailing in the 
management of these highways, that it was 
an easy matter to travel upon them one hun- 
dred miles a day. So late as the time of The- 
odosius, a magistrate of high rank called Ce- 
sarius went post from Antioch to Constanti- 
nople with such rapidity that it w^as made a 
matter of public record. He began his jour- 
ney at evening, and reached Cappadocia 165 
miles distant the next day. He arrived at 
Constantinople on the noon of the sixth 
day, having in that time travelled 665 miles. 
The influence of a government, which could 
thus rapidly issue or enforce its mandates, 
must have been overwhelming. 

The supervision of these roads was en- 
trusted to men of the highest rank. Augus- 
tus made those about the capitol his parti- 
cular care, and pretors, attended by lictors, 
superintended the paving in person. Nor 
was the Emperor, the first of the Caesars who 
did so, for the great Julius acted as an over- 
seer, and in that capacity as the colleague of 
another noble Roman. 

The classics are full of references to this 
subject. Pliny in one of his epistles to Pon- 
tius, speaks of the high satisfaction which 
he derived from the appointment of his 



38 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

friend to the surveyorship of the Emilian 
way. Statius a poet of the time of Nero 
and Domitian, alludes in his Sylvae to the 
similar appointment of a friend, in terms of 
congratulation. Among those of his poems 
which have come down to us, one upon the 
Domitian way, a branch of the Appian, con- 
tains besides a large portion of flattery of the 
emperor, a very exact account of the process 
of road making, and a glowing eulogy of its 
advantages. The lines in the commence- 
ment of the poem describe the first efforts 
of the laborers in a very animated manner, 
and allude to the noise they necessarily oc- 
casion. 

" Quis duri silicis gravis que ferri 
Immanus sonus equori propinquam, 
Saxosae latus Appiae replevit ?" 

In the fiftieth line he breaks forth thus : 

' ' O quantae pariter manus laborant, 
Hi cedunt nemus, exuuntque montes 
Hi ferro scopulos trabesque levant, 
Illi saxa ligant opusque texunt, 
Cacto pulvere sordido que topho." 

These expressions almost exactly describe 
the modern operation of grading and paving. 
Nor is it singular that the Roman govern- 
ment was so successful in its public works, 
when it interested its citizens directly in 
their construction, by paying them liberally 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 



39 



for the labor of their slaves, besides creating 
avenues on which the spoils of conquest 
were to be returned, for division among the 
people. 

The Appian way, so celebrated as to be 
styled Regina Viarum Longarum, was cal- 
led after the name of its constructor, Appius 
Claudius Coecus. This is not the person 
whose name has come down to us in con- 
nection with that of the hapless Virginia, but 
a noble Roman, who won the confidence of 
his countrymen by his patriotism and elo- 
quence, and who lives in the verse of Ovid 
and the prose of Tully. It was he, who in 
his old age and in its infirmity of health, dis- 
suaded the people from accepting an inglo- 
rious peace w^ith Pyrrhus. Yet illustrious 
as he was, for the qualities which they most 
admired, the peaceful honors of the Appian 
way have outlasted all the rest. This work 
is the reflector, which has shed the light of 
his memory and example through the long 
vista of years. 

The road was constructed several hun- 
dred years before the Christian era, if we 
may judge from corresponding events, and 
ran from the Porta Capena, now the modern 
gate of St. Sebastian, to Capua a distance of 



40 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

about 130 miles, then the limit of the Roman 
territory. It was afterwards continued as far 
as Brundusium ; and to Julius Cajsar this ex- 
tension is generally attributed. Its whole 
length was about 342 miles. It was paved 
with the hardest flint, and the v/hole dis- 
tance was marked out by small columns, at 
a mile's distance from each other, called ter- 
mini. At Sinuessa, a maritime town of 
Campania, celebrated for its thermal springs 
and mineral waters, it branched off into the 
Domitian way, and led to Baise, Neapolis 
and Pompeii, at which latter place, it has 
been brought to light and become the pro- 
perty of modern research. The Appian way 
crossed the Pontine marshes, and necessarily 
required the greatest attention and frequent 
repairs. In the year before Christ, 158^ it 
was very extensively repaired. A stone in 
the tower of Triponti, still records the fact 
that the emperor Trajan expended money 
for a similar purpose ; and as late as the time 
of Pius VI. the road was kept in excellent 
condition throughout the papal territories. 
The exhumation of Pompeii and Hercula- 
neum, after a thousand years interment be- 
neath the the lava of Vesuvius, has exposed 
to modern curiosity a perfect picture of an- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 41 

cient life and manners. New light has been 
thrown upon arts long since forgotten, and 
even the subject now under discussion has 
been benefitted by the discovery. 

Let the reader says a modern writer, 
who has furnished us with the most graphic 
description of Pompeii, suppose himself 
passing this road, then as he approaches the 
city, both sides of the way for nearly a fur- 
long before he reaches it, are occupied by 
tombs and public monuments, according to 
the Roman custom, intermixed with shops in 
front of which were arcades. The chariot 
way is narrow, seldom exceeding ten feet in 
width, except within the gate at the com- 
mencement of the great street where it is 
upwards of twenty feet across. The foot- 
ways are two or three feet wide, and eleva- 
ted from eight inches to a foot above the 
road having a curb and guard stones. The 
traveller passing through the street of tombs 
enters the city by the gate of Herculaneum. 
Here a long tortuous street presents itself to 
his view, having on either side broken walls 
of lava stuccoed and decorated with arabes- 
ques and paintings mingled with the pecu- 
liar letters then in use. The streets are 
paved with large irregular pieces of lava 



42 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 



joined neatly together, in which the chariot 
wheels have worn ruts still plainly discerni- 
ble. In some places they are an inch and 
a half deep, and in the narrow streets follow 
one track. Where the streets are wider, 
the ruts are numerous, and irregular. In 
those places where numerous pieces of lava 
met in one point, and in process of time a 
hole was made, the injury was repaired with 
pieces of ,iron which still remain in the an- 
gles. In most places the streets were so 
narrow that they might be crossed with one 
stride, w^here they were wider, a raised stone 
was placed in the centre of the crossing 
place. The Flaminian way was another of 
these famous roads, constructed by the con- 
sul Flaminius who was killed- at the battle 
of Thrasymene. It extended to Arimenum 
a city of Umbria, at the mouth of the Arime- 
nus, 180 miles from Rome. The gate of mo- 
dern Rome opening upon this road is the 
Porta del Populo, though not occupying pre- 
cisely the site of the old gate. This was the 
great route along the Adriatic. Where it 
crossed the river Nar about sixty miles from 
Rome, there was a bridge with an arch of 
150 feet span, and 100 rise, which was pro- 
nounced by Addison the stateliest ruin in 
Italy. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 43 

Besides these, the other principal roads 
were the Aurelian leading along the Medi- 
terranean from Rome to Nice. The Clau- 
dian which branched from the Fiaminian at 
the Pons Mulvius, now the Ponte Molle, ce- 
lebrated as the scene of the death of the ty- 
rant Maxentius. Thence it reached and 
united with the Aurelian at Lucca. The 
Emilian led from Placentia to Ariminum, 
the modern Rimini. The Valerian, pass- 
ed through the Sabine territory to the Ger- 
man colony of the Marsi, who for a long- 
time resisted the Roman arms. On this 
was situated th« celebrated villa of Maecen- 
as. The Latinian was a road of sixteen 
miles in length leading to Mount Albanus, 
where those singular consular sacrifices, cal- 
led the Feriae Latinee took place, and the 
triumphant generals sometimes led their ar- 
mies in solemn procession. The Cassian 
way, which went from Rome to Florence, 
is still the principal route across the Cam- 
pagna. The Salarian was another avenue 
into the Sabine country by means of which 
the citizens received their supplies of salt. 
Another road was the Ardetina, a branch of 
the Appian, and it led to the town of Ardea, 
near the coast; another the Labicana, and 



44 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

Prenestina, which ran to Preneste, a town in 
Latium twenty-one miles from Rome, cele- 
brated for its oracle and temple. Another 
was the Nomentana, leading to a Sabine 
town of the same name, whence the luxuri- 
ous derived much of their wine. It was to 
the Sacred Mount, visible from this road, 
that the people of Rome withdrew, when 
they revolted against the Patricians, and from 
which they returned when admonished by 
the well composed fable of Menenius Agrippa. 
Besides these, were the Tusculan or Cam- 
panian way, leading out of the modern gate 
of St. John's to Tusculum, and the Ostian 
which connected the city with the port at 
the mouth of the Tiber, sixteen miles dis- 
tant. This is now a place for the banish- 
ment of criminals, but in consequence of the 
changes effected by the river and the sea, it 
is no longer a maritime place. 

All these roads were more or less adorned 
with tombs and monuments, long since de- 
spoiled either by barbarian conquerors, or 
relentless antiquarians. The description al- 
ready given of the street of Tombs in Pom- 
peii, is supposed to be generally applicable 
to all the principal urban roads of Italy. The 
tombs of the dead, mingled with the gay re- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 45 

sidences of the living. Monuments, porticos, 
seats and statues, blended life and death so 
closely, it seemed as if the spirits of the old 
Romans after the termination of their corpo- 
real existence, returned to mingle in the bu- 
sy throngs they had left behind. 

We have already noticed the custom of 
having post horses on the great roads, and 
that carriages were subsequently introduced, 
Tiiese were after the Greek model. The 
Roman ladies were much accustomed to 
sedan chairs, the curtains of which were 
of skin or cloth, and the windows of mica. 
They reclined on pillows, and were carried 
about by their slaves. There were also lit- 
ters drawn by mules. When horses were 
driven before chariots, they were harnessed 
abreast of each other, and Nero who vaunt- 
ed of his talents as a fiddler, boasted also of 
having driven ten horses side by side at the 
Olympic games. Sleds, or carriages without 
wheels were generally used in rustic life. 

Sometimes four wheeled carriages were 
employed to carry females to the public ex- 
hibitions, and were called pilentse, but these 
were not in ordinary use. Those built for 
speed had but two wheels, and were called 
Citia. 



46 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

It would be entirely useless to extend this 
portion of our discussion. Those desirous 
of studying the details of Roman travelling, 
will refer to those classic writers familiar to 
every student. Almost all modern travel- 
lers in Italy give some account of the an- 
cient roads, and volumes might yet be, as 
volumes have been written on this feature 
of Roman enterprise. 

The grandeur of the empire, and the vast- 
ness of its influence have furnished themes 
for the ablest historic pens, and nothing is 
more certain than the fact, that what the va- 
lor of the Romans won in the field, their sa- 
gacity retained for them by the construction 
of roads. 

Even now one of the first fruits of the 
French conquest in Africa, is the discovery 
of a Roman military road, which the con- 
querors intend to turn to their own advan- 
tage, and as the means of making a new sea 
port for Constantina instead of Bona, which 
has hitherto been used as such. 

The translation of the Roman power to 
the banks of the Bosphorus, led naturally 
to the abandonment of the public works of 
which we have treated. Political consider- 
ations involve too often all other interests. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 47 

It is ill vain that industry or patriotism ex- 
ert their influence against misgovernment. 
Misgovernment brings all to ruin, and Impe- 
rial Rome, drawing her supplies from a sub- 
jugated world, could not at last repair the 
prodigal waste of even the few who control- 
led her destinies. 

The contrast between her days of magni- 
ficence and her decline is beautifully painted 
by a modern writer. 

The sea is white with sails 
Innumerable, wafting to the shore 
Treasures untold ; the vale, the promontories 
A dream of glory. Temples, palaces 
Called up as by enchantment, aqueducts 
Among the groves and glades rolling along, 
Rivers on many an arch high over head; 
And in the centre, like a burning sun, 
The Imperial City. 
»#*«■»«*« 

Once more we look, and all is still as night ; 
All desolate. Groves, temples, palaces. 
Swept from the sight, and nothing visible 
Amid the sulphureous vapors that exhale, 
As from a land accurst, save here and there 
An empty tomb, a fragment like the limb 
Of some dismembered giant. In the midst 
A city stands, her domes and turrets crowned 
With many a cross ; but they that issue forth 



48 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

Wander like strangers who had built among 
The mighty ruins, silent, spiritless : 
And on the road, where once we might have met 
Csesar and Cato, and men more than kings, 
We meet, none else, the pilgrim and the beggar. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 49 



CHAPTER II. 



When the seat of emph-e was transferred 
from the Tiber to the Bosphorus, the power 
and resources of the imperial city declined, 
and her roads, bridges and aqueducts went 
to decay. These monuments of her great- 
ness fell beneath the hand of time and the 
ruthlessness of invasion ; and though they 
had indirectly favored the propagation of 
Christianity, and the historians of the church 
admit the facilities of communication afford- 
ed by them, they were suffered to remain un- 
repaired, and the distant provinces, and the 
remote population that had felt the energies 
of the great central power, were now left to 
their own resources, and their own opinions. 

Darkness gradually overspread the world, 
and for a time, covered with its gloomy pall 
the literature, the arts, and the trophies of 
former ages. The human intellect, although 
visited by the day-spring from on high, with- 
drew from the consideration of the true ob- 
jects and responsibilities of life, to lose itself 
in dreamy abstractions, and gave up the 

7 



50 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

realities of exis^tence for a philosophy of sha- 
dowless images. The natural repugnance 
of the Christians of those days to the works 
of heathen art, which is supposed by some to 
have hastened their decay, was not a little 
aided by a decree of the Council of Carthage, 
which in the year 398, prohibited the read- 
ing of secular books by the clergy. Physical 
science could not prosper in such a state of 
things, and a ''jargon of mystical philoso- 
phy half fanaticism and half imposture, a 
barren and inflated philology," if we may 
credit the historians of that day, character- 
ized this period. After the introduction of 
monkery, says Hallam, and its unsocial the- 
ory of duties, the serious and reflecting part 
of mankind on whom science mostly relies, 
was turned to habits which, in the most 
favorable view, could not quicken the intel- 
lectual energies. 

The final settlement of barbarous nations 
in Gaul, Spain and Italy, consummated the 
ruin of those arts by which Rome had be- 
come the mistress of the world. 

One of the legacies which she had left to 
her distant provinces was her roads. The 
island of Britain had her share, and their po- 
sition is well known to antiquarians. Indeed 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 51 

there is a book extant, called the Iter Brit- 
tanicum, attributed to the Emperor Antino- 
us, which is an itinerary, containing the 
names and direction of the roads in that 
island. It was this emperor who distin- 
guished himself as a restorer of the public 
works, and the rebuilder of public edifices; 
and who declared that he preferred the pre- 
servation of one citizen to the death of a 
hundred enemies. These British roads serv- 
ed principally as a means of communication 
between the military posts. It is the gene- 
rally received opinion among the antiqua- 
rians, that the southern part of the island 
was crossed in various places by four great 
roads, and these are well known and par- 
ticularly described, as the Fosse, Watling 
St., Ermine St., and the Ikenild. 

The Fosse commenced at Totness, in De- 
vonshire, and ran to Bristol, Cirencester, Co- 
ventry, Leicester, Newark and Lincoln. 

Watling St. commenced at Dover and 
proceeded through Kent by the way of Can- 
terbury to London ; thence northwardly to 
Edgeware, St. Albans, Dunstable, Stony 
Stratford, and along the western boundary 
of Leicestershire ; it crossed the Fosse near 
Bosworth, and terminated at York and Ches- 



52 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

ter le Street in Durham. Some persons ima- 
gine that it was subsequently continued to 
Caithness in Scotland. 

The Ermine St., ran from St. Davids, 
Wales, to Southampton, crossing the Fosse in 
its way. 

The Ikenild is supposed to have com- 
menced on the eastern coast of England, 
then to have crossed Watling St. at Dunsta- 
ble, and to have proceeded thence north- 
wardly through Staffordshire to the west 
coast.* 

The remains of old Roman roads are now 
frequently discovered in England, and it is a 
singular fact and worthy of notice, that Sir 
Christopher Wren, when preparing to erect 
the church of St. Mary-le-bone, found one of 
these causeways eighteen feet below the sur- 
face of the ground ; and so exceedingly firm 
was its texture, and so firmly cemented its 
material, that he actually erected the tower 
of the church upon it, as the best foundation 
he could possibly obtain. 

These roads were constantly traversed by 
the military, who had their stations erected 

" In the United Service Journal for January, 1836, is an account 
of a recent survey of a Roman road frora Silchester, made by Bome 
officers of the Royal Military College. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 



53 



at proper distances, to preserve their sup- 
plies. Some of these points became marts 
of trade, and it is conceded by the early his- 
torians of England, that these works of the 
Romans materially benefitted their country, 
and gave an impetus to the national in- 
dustry. 

France, then Gaul, was also traversed in 
every quarter by these military roads, which 
are fully treated of in the French Encyclo- 
pedia. One of them crossed the mountains 
of Auverne, and reached Aquitaine ; another 
followed the Meuse to the German ocean ; an- 
other went through Burgundy, Champagne, 
and Picardy to Boulogne ; another extended 
along the Rhone and stopped at Marseilles. 
All these were connected, by numerous 
branch roads, and their ruins are still dis- 
cernible to the eye of the traveller. 

The departure of the Romans from these 
countries, was the signal for intestine com- 
motions, and bloody invasions by foreign 
enemies hitherto held in check by the terror 
of the Roman name. They had in conse- 
quence neither time nor ability to keep up 
the communications wiiich had for several 
hundred years been established by their con- 
querors. It would be a tedious task to fol- 



54 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

low the ancient Britons through their suc- 
ceeding history. The sway of their Druid 
priests, and the ignorance in which they 
kept the people, tended as mucii to the down- 
fall of the nation, as the hundred years of 
war, which ended in their complete subjuga- 
tion. It is not strange that their roads, their 
walls and their towns almost ceased to exist. 
Imagine, for a moment that such a series of 
misfortunes as these were the lot of our own 
country, and where would the future histo- 
rian find the monuments of our greatness. 
If one disastrous fire effaces a large portion 
of the most valuable quarter of a city within 
our own observation and in our brief day, 
what must be the effect of a century of blood- 
shed and conflagration'? Britain, says the 
eloquent Gibbon, was for a time lost among 
the fabulous islands of the ocean. 

It is ascertained with considerable cer- 
tainty, that previous to the conquest by the 
Romans, the natives had trackways, called 
in their language, post-ways and ridge-ways. 
They were neither paved nor faced with 
gravel, but were covered with turf. Narrow 
roads were called passes, and in order to 
render them secure to travellers, the woods 
which skirted them were cut down, The 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 55 

Romans are said to have adopted some of 
these routes. 

A discussion has prevailed to some extent 
as to the fact whether at this period any 
other mode of transportation vs^as adopted, 
than that of pack-horses ; but the best au- 
thorities are strenuous in the affirmative. The 
internal trade of the country, as may be im- 
agined, was very trifling for many hundred 
years, although local regulations were made 
to encourage it, such as the establishment of 
weekly markets and mints in the principal 
towns. It is a remarkable circumstance that 
the most important part of the trade consist- 
ed in the sale of slaves taken in their domes- 
tic wars. The nearest relatives did not hesi- 
tate when they had the opportunity, to sell 
each other into captivity, and slave mer- 
chants visited England as late as the time of 
the Roman conquest, to purchase its sons and 
daughters for the Spanish and African mart, 
for those of Italy, and still nearer home, for 
those also of Ireland. 

The slave trade of our own time is not 
more cruel in its character, nor is it conduct- 
ed with greater energy, than that was to 
which we refer. William of Malmsbury 
says, it was a custom which seemed to be 



56 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

natural to the people, and the biographer of 
a pious prelate of that time, speaks of the 
horrors and iniquities of the traffic with such 
warrnth, as to call forth the indignation of 
every honest breast. The sale of some very 
fine looking young men in the city of Rome, 
gave Gregory the Great the first idea of send- 
ing missionaries to their native country. 

In 1285, and not till then, did the subject 
of roads become sufficiently important to at- 
tract the attention of the government, when 
the first act was passed in relation to them. 

In 1346, Edward the third was empowered 
to levy a toll on carts or carriages going from 
St. Giles in the field to Temple bar. In the 
time of Henry VIII. an attempt was made 
to procure the improvement of the roads, by 
compelling the parishes through which they 
passed to keep them in repair by rates levied 
on land-holders, and labor enforced on others. 
An essential improvement also took place in 
the reign of Philip and Mary, w^hen the an- 
nual appointment of rdad surveyors was au- 
thorised to be made by the inhabitants. 
Some further alterations were then made to 
the existing laws, by Mary and Elizabeth, 
and in the time of James I., and Charles I. 
and II. the system of toll-gates was adopted 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 57 

ill consequence of the increase of travel, 
which injured the roads without furnishing 
the necessary means of repair. The first 
toll was exacted in the reign of Charles 
II. upon persons travelling on the great 
northern road. This for a time proved to 
be an unpopular measure. The people rose 
and pulled down the gates, and an armed 
force was ordered out to maintain the law. 
The landholders remonstrated against tolls, 
because in their opinion they reduced the 
value of their property; — a notion which 
experience soon corrected. But though the 
owners of the soil saw their error, yet as late 
as the reign of George II,. it was necessary 
to prevent the pulling down of toll bars by 
declaring it to be a felony. A multitude of 
enactments followed from time to time, but it 
was not till after 1760 that turnpikes be- 
came general. Between that year and 1774 
452 turnpike acts were passed, and between 
1785 and 1809 no less than 1062 more. The 
details of the system by which they are ma- 
naged, are fully given by numerous writers 
on the subject, and copious extracts are giv- 
en in the latter part of this treatise. Parnell, 
Dupin, Edgeworth and McCulloch, are parti- 
8 



58 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

cularlj worthy of the study of those who 
would thoroughly understand the legislative 
history of roads in England. Notwithstand- 
ing all that had been done, down to the mid- 
dle of the last century they were almost im- 
passable for wheel carriages. As these have 
been modified from the original forms into 
their present elegant and convenient shape, 
by the progress of refinement and the im- 
provement of the public roads, a glance 
at their progress may not be uninteresting. 
Some authorities contend, that for many 
hundred years after the departure of the 
Romans, nothing but pack horses were used 
for the conveyance of goods, and that wheel 
carriages were unknown. This is not so. 
A particular account of no less than six dif- 
ferent kinds of vehicles is preserved — The 
Benna, Petoritum, Currus, Covinus, Essed- 
um, and Rheda. The Benna was used by 
travellers, and the Currus was the common 
waggon of the country, appropriated to ag- 
ricultural and mercantile purposes. The 
others were chiefly of a military character. 
The Essedum is mentioned in Caesar's Com- 
mentaries, and its peculiar form was adapt- 
ed to the mode of fighting then habitual with 
the Britons. An animated description of an 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 59 

ancient war chariot is to be found in Ossian, 
in which he styles it " the flame of death." 
Besides the usual method of travelling on 
horseback, litters were also in vogue. Sub- 
sequently the queens of the different small 
kingdoms into vdiich England was for a time 
divided, enjoyed the exclusive privilege of the 
car or chariot, and one of them is said to 
have hung up in a bag, with her most es- 
teemed relics, that in which she occasionally 
rode. These machines must have been ve- 
ry rude of construction however, when the 
greatest improvement made on them by the 
Saxons is said to have been the substitution 
of a hammock swung between four posts 
mounted on wheels upon which the passen- 
ger reclined. In some of the earliest spe- 
cimens of English poetry we find mention 
made of the chare, or charat then in use. 
There are accounts of coaches as early as 
1253, and it is recorded that in 1380, when 
the celebrated Wat Tyler rose against the 
crown, Richard II. fled from the tower 
in a covered carriage called a whirlicote. 
Q,ueen Catharine, one of the unhappy wives 
of Henry VIII., was carried to the corona- 
tion in a litter, followed by her ladies in co- 
vered chariots. 



60 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

The general introduction of coaches into 
England is attributed to queen Elizabeth, 
who patronized a German or Hollander, by 
the name of Boonen, a coach builder from 
the continent. For the honor of the inven- 
tion there are as many national claims pre- 
ferred as there were for the birth place of 
Homer. With a singular sort of favor, this 
princess not only bought his coaches but 
made him her coachman, and the appearance 
of her equipage thus driven, was thought 
worthy of being preserved by an engraving. 
It was first used by her when she went to St. 
Paul's to return thanks for the destruction 
of the Armada. From the extreme of scarci- 
ty, these vehicles became so numerous as to 
become nuisances. In 1636, no less than 
6000 of them, it is said, jolted about the 
streets of London. The satirists of the time 
inveighed loudly against them, and Taylor, 
the water poet, in particular, complained of 
the withdrawal of so many persons from 
their former employment to become through 
the witchcraft of the coach, " butterfly pa- 
ges, trolling footmen, and hard drinking 
coachmen." Although it was for a long 
time considered effeminate in men to ride 
about in coaches, yet it seems to have been 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 61 

a matter of some importance in the then fa- 
shionable world, to see who could drive the 
greatest number of horses before them. It 
is gravely chronicled that in 1619 when the 
Duke of Buckingham had driven six horses 
in hand, he was outdone by a nobleman who 
proceeded through the streets of London 
with eight. The surprise of the citizens at 
this feat of daring, added to his celebrity, al- 
though it was already that of " the Percy's 
high born race." 

Down to the time of James I. the judges 
rode to court on horseback, and the Lord 
Mayor who now rejoices in his coach and 
barge, was also obliged to play the eques- 
trian, but with a vaulting ambition that of- 
ten over leaped itself and fell on the other 
side. 

Sir Walter Scott who drew many of his 
most pleasing descriptions from facts which 
lay in tradition, or lived chiefly in domestic 
history, has given an account of a coach 
in the time of Charles 11., which is to be 
found in his admirable novel of " Old Mor- 
tality." 

The Lord Lieutenant of the county, says 
he, a personage of ducal rank, alone pre- 
tended to the magnificence of a wheel car- 



62 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

riage, others covered with tarnished gilding 
and sculpture, in shape like the vulgar picture 
of Noah's ark, drawn by eight long tailed 
Flanders mares, carrying eight insides and 
six outsides. The insides w^ere their graces 
in person, two maids of honor, two children, 
a chaplain stuffed into a sort of lateral re- 
cess, formed by a projection at the door of 
the vehicle, and called from its appearance 
the boot, and an equerry to his grace en- 
sconced in a corresponding contrivance on 
the opposite side. A coachman and three 
postillions who wore short swords, and tie 
wigs with three tails, having blunderbusses 
slung behind them and pistols at the saddle 
bow, conducted the equipage. On the foot 
board behind this moving mansion house, 
stood or rather hung in triple pile, six lac- 
quies in rich liveries armed up to the teeth." 

As further illustrations of the manners of a 
nation whose progressive importance has been 
so dependent on roads, the various vehicles 
used on state occasions would furnish an amu- 
sing picture. Were we to pursue all the by- 
paths which lead from our main subject, it 
would be impracticable to confine ourselves 
within the limits to which we are prescribed. 

It seems that coaches were only first let 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 63 

to hire as late as 1625, and that the practice 
originated with an old naval captain of the 
name of Baily ; and the next year a follower 
of the Duke of Buckingham obtained from 
Charles II. the privilege of keeping Sedan 
chairs. A valuable chapter of statistics 
might be furnished on this topic as well as 
the preceding. Connected with the improve- 
ment of the roads was that of stage coaches, 
which as a public benefit, have from time to 
time attracted the public attention. Their 
speed gradually increased as the roads be- 
came better. For example, the first that 
ran between Edinburgh and Glasgow, in 
the year 1 678, a distance of forty-four miles 
occupied six days in going and returning : 
now the journey is performed in four hours. 
In 1706 the stage coaches went from Lon- 
don to York in four days, and now they per- 
form the distance in twenty-four hours. In 
1712 it took thirteen days to travel by coach 
from London to Edinburgh, and now it re- 
quires but forty hours! In 1760 travellers 
were two whole days in going from London 
to Brighton, now they are only about five 
hours. One of the greatest triumphs of mo- 
dern times is that of rapid and safe travel- 
ing. The difficulties formerly attending it 



' 64 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

are alluded to constantly by the writers of 
those days. I.eavmg out of the account, the 
dangers which arose from the frequency of 
thefts, murder and highway robbery, which 
according to Hallam, became almost the na- 
tional crime of England during the middle 
ages, we find that the bad condition of the 
roads had a serious effect on the national 
prosperity, and on individual comfort. Hav- 
ing illustrated by a quotation from Scott, 
the character of a coach in the time of one 
of the Stuarts, it may be well to introduce 
the description of a journey made by some 
illustrious personages, as late as the time of 
queen Anne. When a royal visiter from 
Spain attempted to pay a visit to Prince 
George of Denmark her husband, he found 
its accomplishment almost impossible. " We 
set out, says the narrator of the expedition, 
at six in the morning by torch-light, to go 
to Petworth, and did not get out of the 
coaches, only, when we were overtU7med or 
stuck fast in the mire ! His highness's body 
coach would have suffered very much if the 
nimble boors of Sussex had not frequently 
poised or supported it with their shoulders, 
from Godalming almost to Petworth. The 
last nine miles of the way cost us six hours 
to conquer them, and indeed we had never 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 65 

done it, if the king had not several times 
lent us a pair of his horses out of his own 
coach." 

It seems this^ Petwortli road was no bet- 
ter a long time afterwards, for when a Duke 
of Somerset proposed to travel upon it at a 
certain day, a letter was sent in advance 
directing the keepers and persons who knew 
the holes and sloughs " to come to meet him 
with lanterns and long poles to keep him 
on his way." The Sussex roads then bad 
to a proverb, are now famous for their ex- 
cellence. 

In 1739 two persons undertook a journey 
from Glasgow to London on horseback, and 
they found nothing but narrow causeways 
until they came within 110 miles of the 
metropolis. 

They encountered strings of pack horses 
thirty and forty at a time, carrying goods, 
the leader of the train being equipped with 
a bell to warn travellers coming in an oppo- 
site direction and these were generally ob- 
liged to draw on one side into the ditches so 
that the train could pass. 

We have noticed the various characters 
of the roads and of the vehicles used upon 
9 



66 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

thenij at different periods of tiaie. The ac- 
commodations furnished by the way side re- 
quire a passing notice. Industrious anti- 
quarians have not failed to trace out all 
their peculiarities. At first, private dwel- 
lings were used for lodging places and hous- 
es of refreshment. Religious establishments 
were also compelled to entertain travellers 
if their hospitality was demanded. In the 
first part of Shakspeare's play of Henry IV. 
the first scene of the second act is laid in an 
inn-yard at Rochester, where in the brief 
dialogue between two carriers, many of 
the characteristics of the inland traffic of the 
time are given with graphic skill. In the 
opening chapter of Kenilworth, the modern 
Shakspeare, has given an equally vivid de- 
scription of the host, the fare and the guests 
which were to be found in the time of Eli- 
zabeth congregated under the roof of such 
as Silas Gosling of the Bonny Black Bear. 

From the specimens thus far given of the 
roads with their concomitants in England 
during the middle ages, we may judge very 
accurately of the state of them on the con- 
tinent. Ex uno disce omnes. From the past 
we now turn to the present time. Let us 
now examine their present condition through- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 67 

out Europe, before we pa,ss to the important 
considerations connected with recent dis- 
coveries in the form and management of 
roads. The roads of England and Wales 
are now computed to be upwards of 24,000 
miles in length so far as they are turnpiked. 
And the extent of the common and private 
roads in the United Kingdom is estimated at 
100,000 miles. The public roads are of the 
finest description, being constructed on sci- 
entific principles, and designed by eminent 
engineers The plan of construction, so far 
as material is concerned, is generally that 
of Mr. McAdam, although the notions of Mr. 
Telford as to the necessity of having a non 
elastic foundation seem now to prevail among 
the English engineers. 

Great care is taken to leave a perfect 
drainage by means of deep ditches commu- 
nicating with the streams and natural out- 
lets of the country. These it is held, should 
be sunk at least three feet below the sur- 
face of the road, and wherever the water is 
likely to lie on^the surface from the nature 
of the slopes, or route, cross chains are al- 
ways provided. 

The cuttings through hills are carefully 
made not merely for the purpose of keeping 



68 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

the banks in their places, but to allow the 
wind and sun to have the greatest effect 
and therefore a slope of two feet horizon- 
tal to one perpendicular is strongly recom- 
mended. 

It is also usual to protect these slopes by 
covering them with sods. No improvement 
says a writer on this subject, will be found 
greater than keeping the surfaces of the 
roads above the level of the adjacent land. 
A convex surface seems to be the most in 
use, though there are strong objections to 
it, and the idea does not generally prevail. 
The materials for a good road are various. 
Greenstone, granite, sandstone, and lime- 
stone are all adopted according to circum- 
stances. A mass of valuable information on 
this head, has from time to time been elicit- 
ed in the examinations made by committees 
of the House of Commons, of competent en- 
gineers, and by the various experiments un- 
dertaken to ascertain the best arrangement 
of the material. A dry foundation and lay- 
ers of clean hard broken stone appear to be 
the chief object of the English road makers. 
They state that all those imperfectly formed 
with pebbles or gravel, on a loose founda- 
tion, soon wear out, for the reason that they 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 69 

expand readily with heat, and throw up the 
stones, or else absorb moisture, and loosen 
them. In short that the consequent wear 
and tear of the material lead to the destruc- 
tion of the road and a constant outlay to keep 
them in proper order. All kinds of pave- 
ments have also been proposed in reference 
to this subject. Patent after patent has 
been taken out for the purpose of securing 
some supposed advantage. 

As one of the natural consequences of the 
formation of roads, pavements became ne- 
cessary, particularly in cities, where the con- 
venience of a dense population requires that 
the public avenues should be kept in a pas- 
sable condition, and also on those routes 
where the transportation of goods with the 
least practicable difficulty became a matter 
of importance to purchasers and consumers. 

It is a singular fact however, as has al- 
ready been incidentally seen, that the high- 
ways of the ancients were much oftener 
paved than the streets of their cities. 

According to Isidorus, Carthage was the— \| 
first town in which pavements were intro- ' ^ 
duced, and her example was followed by 
her subsequent rival Rome. The exact time 
at which the latter adopted this improventis 



/ 



70 TREATISE ON ROADS, 

still ill doubt, and it has been a grave mat- 
ter of inquiry not fully decided by the anti- 
quarian critics. A passage in Livy is as yet 
uninterpreted in relation to this subject, al- 
though that historian speaks explicitly in 
other places of the pavement in the vicinity 
of the ox market, the Temple of Venus, and 
the Temple of Mars. 

The city of Jerusalem has been supposed 
to have been paved from some circumstan- 
ces in its history, and from a proposition 
mentioned by Josephus, as having been 
made by the Jevs^s to Agrippa, w^hich was 
to employ the ^vorkmen for that object, af- 
ter they had completed the rebuilding of the 
temple. 

All writers agree that of the modern cities 
Cordova in Spain, was the first which was 
paved, and that it was so improved in the 
year 850 by the Caliph Abdorrahman. One 
of the proofs that this prince was an enlight- 
ened man, is the fact that he favored trade, 
improved its avenues, and supplied his capi- 
tal with water in leaden pipes. 

The city of Paris was not paved even in 
part until the twelfth century, and as late 
as 1614 many principal streets were still in 
their original state. Even now they are not 



TREATISE ON ROADS- 71 

in as perfect condition as the refinement of 
the age, and the comfort of pedestrians re- 
quire. Other large French towns followed 
the example of the metropolis, and it is as- 
serted by historians of that country, that af- 
ter the system of pavements became general 
many dangerous maladies almost entirely 
disappeared. London was not paved until 
the end of the eleventh century, and then 
only in part. As the wealth of the city in- 
creased, these improvements were extended, 
and favored by different monarchs, Berlin 
was first paved in 1679, and other continen- 
tal towns progressively adopted the system. 
The regulations of the police which follow^ed 
its adoption in different countries, though in 
many respects curious, are not sufficiently 
important to justify their introduction into 
this treatise. 

To practical readers it may how^ever, be 
interesting to glance at the different kinds 
of pavements now in use. Some of the ci- 
ties of Italy afford fine examples of the art. 
The tracks for wheel carriages are composed 
of large blocks of limestone or sandstone, 
some of them at Florence weigh several 
tons. Tlie streets of Naples are laid with 
immense rectangular pieces of basalt at 



72 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

least six inches thick, laid in cement, forming 
a solid and smooth surface. Those of mo- 
dern Rome are also paved with basaltic 
cubes set in mortar, each furnishing a sur- 
face of ten inches square. 

In Russia, blocks of wood have been used, 
and successfully for the same object, and a 
similar experiment has been made in the 
city of New- York which thus far has been 
satisfactory. 

There are no less than twenty-one kinds 
of paving used in England, well known 
to scientific road makers in that country.* 
One of the most celebrated is the Leith walk 
of Edinburgh formed of ashler. 

In street paving at the present day, the 
following rules are adopted as being the re- 
sult of study and experience. 

All small based, or wedged shaped stones 
must be rejected, and all clayey particles in 
the stratum on which the stones are to be 
bedded, should be removed. The bed of the 
road should be well hardened by ramming 
and treading. An uniform elevation of the 
paving stones should be carefully studied, 
and also as great an uniformity in size. 
Single corners of broad or large stone should 

* See Appendix. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 78 

never be laid across a street, as they form 
a belt which does great injury to carriages 
when passing over it. On the same princi- 
ple, any courses of small stones laid in the 
same way, sink down and form a trench 
equally destructive. The pavement when 
laid down, should also be well rammed down. 
The object is smoothness, stability and im- 
perviousness to water, and as these are 
gained, the excellence of the pavement is 
established. 

One of the most recent improvements, if 
such it may yet be considered, is the in- 
troduction of a composition of asphaltum, 
which is poured hot from a cauldron upon 
the stratum of earth, previously prepared 
for it, and becomes hard and impermeable. 
Enough is not yet known of its durability 
to justify any opinion as to the probability 
of its coming into general use. 

Besides the various processes recommend- 
ed for the formation of roads, there are 
many for keeping them clean and in repair, 
and while the loss of material from wear and 
tear is obvious to the eye, calculations have 
been made with great accuracy, to ascertain 
what loss is sustained by carriages used 
10 



74 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

upon them and what is the comparative 
ease of draught upon various kinds of roads. 

The draught of a waggon weighing 21 
cwt. on a well made pavement as indicated 
in a newly invented dynamometer of Mr. 
McNeil, is 331bs. or in other words, the 
force used to draw tlie waggon over that 
portion of road is 331bs; over a broken 
stone surface of flint, 651bs ; over a gravel 
road, 1471bs. ; over a broken stone road on 
a rough pavement foundation, 461bs. ; over 
a broken stone surface upon a bottom of 
concrete, 461bs. 

The English turnpike roads are under 
the care of trustees appointed by act of 
parliament, who are authorized to borrow 
money for their construction or repair, on a 
mortgage security of the tolls. These tolls 
are sometimes put up to be sold by auction, 
and some of the single gates about London 
have brought under the hammer, as large a 
sum as $15,000 a year. In 1829 the turn- 
pike debt was over 27 millions of dollars. 
The annual expenditure for repairs was 
above 7 millions and a half of dollars. The 
income was about 6 millions of dollars. The 
chief objection to the trustee system of 
supervision, is that the trustees are often too 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 75 

numerous and do not always act in concert. 
These appoint surveyors who manage the 
details. The common roads are still work- 
ed by the inhabitants of the parish, w^ho 
appoint their surveyors, as in early times. 
The best road in England is said to be that 
from London to Holyhead, although crossing 
the most rough and mountainous places in 
Wales, and it has been made the special 
subject of parliamentary inquiry. In the 
constant reports and examinations annually 
made in the British Commons on the inter- 
nal improvements of the empire, the most 
interesting facts are continually developed. 
The effect of the construction of new roads 
has thus been found to be beneficial beyond 
all expectation. The face of the covmtry 
in certain districts of Ireland has been com- 
pletely changed within a few years, by si- 
milar improvements. New villages have 
sprung up, and the inhabitants have found 
out that industry and enterprize are prefer- 
able to discomfort and idleness. 

Mr. Telford on a similar occasion bore 
witness to similar changes effected in Scot- 
land. "I consider" said he, "these improve- 
ments some of the greatest blessings ever 
conferred on any country. £200,000 ex- 



76 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

pended in fifteen years has changed the mor- 
al habits of the great working class for the 
better, and has advanced the country at least 
one hundred years." 

At the risk of trespassing upon the pa- 
tience of our readers we cannot omit this 
opportunity of paying a humble tribute to 
the memory of Mr. Telford. 

This extraordinary man was an example of 
the triumph of genius over the usual diflScul- 
ties of life. It is somewhat singular, that 
the most eminent practical engineers have 
been those who were destitute of what is 
termed a classical education. Like Brindley, 
he was destitute of collegiate honors. The 
son of a humble mechanic of Dumfries in 
Scotland, he commenced his career in the 
work shop of a stone mason, and during the 
leisure he could snatch from the hours of 
repose, he might have been seen sitting in 
the kitchen of a humble cottage, reading his 
favorite books by the glimmering light of a 
turf fire. At this time his skill as a work- 
man, and his taste for poetry were remarked 
by his acquaintances, and as soon as his 
apprenticeship expired, he repaired to Edin- 
burgh, to prosecute with unremitting dili- 
gence, the science of architecture. In 1782, 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 77 

at which time he was 25 years of age, he 
went to London under the patronage of Sir 
William Pulteney, a native of his own par- 
ish, and a personage whose name is well 
known in this state. 

His talents there found a field worthy of 
their exertion, and after superintending some 
public works, highly to the satisfaction of 
his employers, the government, he received 
a valuable appointment as a mark of its 
favor, which he retained to the time of his 
death. ^ 

From this time his fame was established. 
He was consulted by the engineers of other 
nations, and astonished his own country- 
men by the vastness of his designs, and the 
perfect accuracy of their execution. His 
most admired works are the road from 
London to Holyhead, and its celebrated 
bridge over the straits of Menai, connect- 
ing the island of Anglesea with the Welch 
coast. This was erected on the principle of 
suspension, and exceeded in magnitude any 
similar work in the known world. Under 
it passed without inconvenience the "masts 
of the tallest frigates." When we consider 
the immense weight of iron, more than 2000 
tons which had to be suspended in order to 



78 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

sustain the roadway, and the frightful ele- 
vation at which the work was executed, 
we may well believe what the projector 
often declared, that it cost him more intense 
thought than any other he had ever under- 
taken. 

The Caledonian canal was another of the 
monuments of his talent. So were the St. 
Catharine docks, the Highland roads and 
bridges, the canals of Salop, numerous ac- 
queducts, and the internal water communi- 
cations of Sweden, connecting the Baltic and 
the North sea. Indeed nothing of any mo- 
ment w^as attempted, having reference to 
the public works of his own country, with- 
out his advice or co-operation. 

It is pleasing to think that with all this 
flush of popularity, and this eminence of re- 
putation, he preserved his natural simplicity 
of character, and was not less esteemed for 
his private worth than his public services. 

During the constant pressure of business, 
he found time to teach himself the Latin, 
French and German languages, and to be- 
come an accomplished algebraist. 

Having known from experience the me- 
lancholy truth, " slow rises worth by poverty 
depressed," although he himself had boldly 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 79 

soared above its influence, by the unconquer- 
able energy of his own mental resources, 
he became the well known patron of indi- 
gent merit, and was the means of raising 
many excellent individuals to well deserved 
distinction. He died in 1834 at his resi- 
dence in Westminster, and his remains 
were honored with a resting place in the 
Abbey. 

Who can reflect on the useful career of 
such a man, without giving it a decided 
preference over those empty and deceptive 
pursuits, which minister solely to ambition 
without giving any real claim to the respect 
and admiration of mankind. And what 
young man need be discouraged at his onset 
in life, if he has within him, the determina- 
tion to succeed, and the consciousness of 
unyielding integrity. Thus armed, he may 
bid defiance to difficulties, overcome " the 
proud man's scorn, the rich man's contume- 
ly," and rise to the station in life for which 
his talents have rendered him worthy. If 
the heart of a single person who reads this 
should haply be nerved to new exertions 
by the hasty sketch of a great and a good 
man, we will not regret the moments we 
have snatched from the main subject for 
this brief digression. 



80 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

The roads in Scotland are now highly 
spoken of. They are said to have improved 
much more rapidly than those of England. 
They are managed by local trustees, or 
government commissioners, are made either 
at private or the public expense, and some- 
times both. In the time of Cromwell, his 
well known partizan General Wade, by 
means of his soldiery, commenced two cele- 
brated roads into the Highlands from Crief in 
Perthshire, an important pass. They were 
250 miles in extent and were finally com- 
pleted in 1737. They ran, however, over 
such a rugged and difficult country as to be 
continually out of repair, and the people 
were too poor to keep them in order. These 
early military roads extended no further 
north than the Moray frith and along the 
Caledonian glen. 

The wide and extensive country beyond, 
intersected by arms of the sea, mountain 
streams and innumerable ravines, was al- 
most without any means of intercourse. A 
very striking proof of this is found in the 
fact that the counties of Caithness and 
Sutherland were not required to return ju- 
rors to the northern circuit at Inverness. 
Thus were civilization and the administra- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 81 

tion of justice retarded by the neglect of 
internal improvements, a circumstance too 
often forgotten by those who are opposed to 
their progress. This state of things attracted 
the attention of the British parliament, which 
resolved to extend the benefits of the road 
system through every part of the Highlands. 
In 1803 the commissioners appointed under 
an act of the national legislature commenced 
operations, and in the words of a writer con- 
nected with the superintendence of the com- 
mission, " a change was effected in the state 
of the Highlands perhaps unparalleled in the 
same space of time in the history of any 
country." 

The expense was met by legislative ap- 
propriations and local contributions. Up- 
wards of 875 miles of road and 1117 bridges 
were the result of this effort of the government. 
Mr. Telford, the engineer under whose mas- 
terly direction the work was conducted, 
gained much of his reputation by the scien- 
tific arrangement of his grades and his tho- 
rough system of draining. Some of the con- 
sequences of this splendid scheme of internal 
improvement may be briefly stated, and they 
hold out to the sceptical and the ignorant, 
the best possible proofs of the advantage 
and propriety of similar projects elsewhere. 
11 



82 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

It was not till 1806 that stage coaches 
were regularly established in the Highlands, 
and the former absolute solitude of her ro- 
mantic glens is now enlivened by the pre- 
sence of hundreds and thousands of delight- 
ed travellers ; and everywhere, commodious 
houses of entertainment have been erected, 
and the facilities of intercourse enlarged. 
The effects upon the agriculture and inter- 
nal trade of the country have gone hand in 
hand with these facilities of intercommuni- 
cation. Large crops of wheat are raised 
in places formerly untilled. Droves of cat- 
tle, neat habitations, and cheerful farm- 
houses now meet the eye, where once was 
all a waste. The value of land in the 
north has risen beyond all expectation. 
The estates of Chisholm, (only one instance 
out of many) have risen in value since 1785, 
from $3,500 to $25,000 per annum. 

Besides these national roads, there are 
others made by districts, and statute labor, 
which have latterly greatly increased. The 
labor may be commuted for in money. The 
Scottish highways which are not turnpiked 
are managed by boards of magistrates, con- 
sisting of justices of the counties convened 
annually, who appoint the subordinate offi- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 83 

cers and decide all questions connected with 
the subject. The defects of this system 
however, are sufficient to have induced most 
of the counties to obtain acts of parliament 
appointing trustees, and investing them with 
the sole authority of construction and ma- 
nagement. 

The periodical reports of the commission- 
ers for these Scottish roads, are among the 
most interesting documents of their kind, 
and afford conclusive evidence of the utility 
of roads even when constructed in the most 
unpromising localities. These reports and 
others of a similar character have for many 
years been made the subject of parlia- 
mentary examination, and the mass of in- 
formation promulgated by this means has 
led to the most important results. As an 
evidence of the minuteness and character of 
these investigations, it is worthy of notice 
that the commission of 1808 undertook to 
ascertain the best form of wheels to favor 
the draught of horses, and preserve the 
roads from injury. Civil engineers, post- 
masters, stage coach proprietors, coach ma- 
kers, cartwrights were all examined on the 
points most familiar to themselves. In 1819 
a general report was made by a committee 



84 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

of the House of Commons, containing the 
most important facts, and confirming the 
advantages of the new system of construc- 
tion over the old. 

The roads of France are generally straight, 
but have been constructed with little refer- 
ence to grade. Their breadth varies from 
thirty to seventy feet, the middle portion is 
generally paved with stones six, eight, or 
ten inches square, the foundation having 
first been prepared and drained. Some are 
built of rubble stone upon a plan adopted 
by Turgot previous to the revolution. The 
cross roads are scarcely anything but nar- 
row lanes shaded with shrubbery ; and most 
of the second class roads are badly paved, 
or merely covered with gravel. They are 
almost impassable during some part of the 
year. On either side of the road a space 
is generally left unpaved, and long formal 
rows of trees comprise the vista. The de- 
partment of bridges and roads has the di- 
rection of construction and repair, and suras 
are voted by the Chambers to be expended 
under their supervision. In 1830 the ex- 
penditure for repairs amounted to nine mil- 
lion of dollars. In 1828 the royal roads 
extended a distance of 8631 leagues, and 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 85 

the departmental at 7704, while in that year 
the expenditure on the royal roads alone 
were upwards of twenty millions of dollars. 
Previous to the revolution, the old system 
of the Corvee remained in force, which was 
the obligation of the inhabitants to work 
upon the roads or pay a certain amount of 
money for the same object. It was the 
subject of so much complaint as to have 
been abolished at that period. Sir Henry 
Parnell in his recent treatise, says that after 
all the efforts of the French statesmen, the 
system of management is still imperfect, and 
that some plan of legislation is jet to be 
devised by which "good roads may be made 
not only from one town to another, but into 
and through every commune in France." M. 
Dupin complains equally of the system, al- 
though that of his own country. Before even 
a basket of stones can be laid down on a de- 
partmental road, it is necessary that an es- 
timate of the expense should appear in the 
budget of the arrondisement, then of the de- 
partment, and then be submitted to the bu- 
reau of Paris, which after due consideration 
is returned whence it came, and an engineer 
from the public school, an institution under 
the Home Department and maintained at 



86 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

the public expense, is directed to proceed 
at his leisure and execute the repair. 

The roads of Italy are well spoken of by 
travellers, and are generally kept in good 
order. In Milan, the tracks for the wheels 
are made of smooth stones. Some of those 
which cross the Alps are really wonderful. 
That of Mount Cenis renders a passage easy 
which was once a dangerous and difficult 
undertaking. It is a matter of doubt with 
the antiquarians whether the route was 
known to the ancients. Charlemagne cros- 
sed the mountain when he attacked the 
Lombards, and since then it has been well 
known. Napoleon, who on more than one 
occasion seemed to have that emperor be- 
fore him as a model, resolved in 1802, to 
open a safe and durable road between Pied- 
mont and Savoy, and the col or neck of 
Mount Cenis, so called from its being the 
neck or lowest depression in the main ridge 
allowing a passage, was chosen as the most 
feasible route. The French engineers pro- 
jected it with great skill, and a carriage 
road of thirty miles in length, and from 
eighteen to thirty feet wide was made, at 
an expense of one million and a half dollars, 
and by the labor of 3000 men working five 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 87 

months in the year for upwards of seven 
years. In 1815 this hitherto desolate and 
almost unfrequented pass, was thronged by 
16,000 carriages and 34,900 mules and hor- 
ses. Above the wild and romantic plain of 
St. Nicolo, it pierces a rock of granite for 
the distance of 650 feet. Houses of refuge 
twenty-six in number, are maintained by the 
income from tolls, and are provided for the 
benefit of travellers overtaken by fogs and 
snows, during which bells are continually 
rung to guide the steps of the wanderer. 
These houses, in the time of Napoleon, were 
tenated by a body of men called canton- 
niers who repaired the road, but the number 
is now reduced by the Sardinian govern- 
ment to fifty. 

Another famous mountain road is that of 
Mount Genevre, which in 1802 was but a 
mule path. It is now in excellent order^ 
and has been much used since 1804. An 
obelisk commemmorative of this work was 
defaced by the Austrians in 1817. There 
are several other roads in use, as that of St. 
Gothard, not so well maintained, though cele- 
brated for its associations ; but without such 
peculiarity as to demand a particular descrip- 
tion. The Simplon, however, must not be for- 



88 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

gotten. This is the most celebrated of them 
all. It crosses the Sempione, a mountain 10,- 
327 feet in height, and was the result of the 
genius of Napoleon, who constructed it at the 
joint expense of France and Italy. It is thir- 
ty-six miles long, and twenty-five feet wide, 
with so gentle a grade as to allow the hea- 
viest wagons to pass up and down without 
difficulty. It is carried over precipices, deep 
gulfs, high bridges, and through the solid 
rock itself The grand gallery over the 
Frassinone is 683 feet long, and the road 
may be described as a series of galleries 
and grottos ascending to a height of 6,000 
feet above the level of the sea. Some of 
the gorges of the mountains through which 
it passes, are full of what the French term 
the "lovely horrors" of scenery. The views 
at different parts, whether towards Italy or 
Switzerland, are represented as truly mag- 
nificent, and numerous artists have seized 
upon them to give interest to their portfolios, 
or the annuals which are now produced in 
so masterly a manner. There are here also 
the houses of refuge and the cantonniers as 
on the route of Mount Cenis. Mr. Cooper, 
who has lately published a graphic ac- 
count of his tour in Switzerland, and par- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 89 

tlcularly mentions his ascent and descent 
of the Simplon, speaks rather disparagingly 
of the work, and as being excessively and 
unworthily praised. Yet his admiration 
breaks out at times in spite of himself, and 
he admits that he felt a sensation of wonder 
amid this wild and awe-inspiring scenery, 
which he approached upon a road with a 
surface as smooth as any floor. 

Another traveller who preceded him a 
few years, Mariana Starke, whose name is 
connected with an itinerary almost as fa- 
mous as that of Antoninus, speaks in warm- 
er language than Mr. Cooper, of places real- 
izing "the chaos of Milton and the inferno 
of Dante." We must also acknowledge, 
says the fair tourist, " that men who in de- 
fiance of such obstructions as these, could 
form a road exempt even from the appear- 
ance of danger, capable of braving the most 
furious storms, resisting the giant hand of 
time, and conducting human beings, cattle 
and every kind of carriage quickly and safe- 
ly during all seasons of the year, through 
regions of eternal snow, deserve in point of 
genius to be ranked not only with, but 
above the ancient Romans." 
12 



90 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

It is a circumstance disgraceful to human- 
ity, that on the downfall of Napoleon, his 
relentless enemies attempted to destroy the 
road, lest it should keep his memory in the 
minds of men, and thus prove a monument 
which should outlast the brass and marble 
of legitimate thrones ! 

Mr. Rogers in his beautiful poem of Italy, 
describes among other things, the passes 
over Mount Cenis and the Simplon, and soft- 
ens down into the picturesque, what others 
would have treated as the terrific and won- 
derful. 

Like a silver zone 
Flung- about carelessly, it shines afar, 
Catching the eye in many a broken link, 

In many a turn and traverse, as it glides. 
***** 

Yet thro' its fairy course go where it will, 
The torrent stops it not, the rugged rock 
Opens and lets it in, and on it runs, 
Winning its easy way from clime to clime, 
Thro' glens locked up before." 

The roads of Spain have been already al- 
luded to in this treatise, as well as those of 
Switzerland for the sake of illustrating a prin- 
ciple of political economy. It may be well 
to add to what was there said, that they are 
in a miserable condition, and even the royal 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 91 

roads save in the vicinity of the great towns, 
are no better. From Madrid to Burgos 
there are two good roads ; there is another 
from Valladolid to Santander, and another to 
Bilboa. A diligence is now said to ply be- 
tween Saragossa and Barcelona. The funds 
appropriated to their repairs are derived from 
tolls and local taxes, and amount to $450,- 
000 per annum. The Edinburgh Review 
for July 1832, says that with the exception 
of a few high roads, (such as we have no- 
ticed) and which are sufficiently insecure, 
" there exists scarce a wagon or cart track 
through Spain, In Salamanca after a suc- 
cession of abundant harvests, the wheat has 
been left to rot because it would not repay 
the cost of carriage." 

The roads of Portugal are of the same 
character. In Germany the roads resemble 
those of France, except that little or no 
pains are taken with the foundation, and of 
consequence they are full of ruts and often 
impassable. 

The Dutch on the other hand are very 
particular in the construction of theirs. The 
bed of the roads is carefully prepared, a 
cement of mortar is laid down, and upon 
this, bricks called clinkers are placed, with 



92 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

their greatest diameters at right angles to 
the line of the road. The smoothness of 
these surfaces is much admired. An annual 
income of over one million of florins is de- 
rived from them by the government. It is 
said that the German and Prussian roads 
are cut up into ruts, and that it is a common 
contrivance to have the axles of their car- 
riages so made, as to be enlarged or dimi- 
nished at pleasure, to suit the tracks used 
in different provinces. 

Mr. Russell the author of a late tour 
through Germany, states that the establish- 
ment of mails, called schnell wagons or 
velocity coaches, which travel at the rate 
of five or six miles an hour, at first caused 
considerable excitement. The ordinary di- 
ligence of the country is of a similar charac- 
ter with the roads. The luggage is placed 
behind on a flooring or projecting platform, 
nearly as long as the vehicle itself, and is 
piled up and secured with chains in total 
disregard of the centre of gravity. This 
process completed, the guard pays it no 
further attention. Six persons travel inside 
and two outside. The low roof, the straight 
backs of the seats and the invariable ac- 
companiment of tobacco smoke, with a speed 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 93 

of three miles an hour, are said to make a 
journey so disagreeable as to produce loath- 
ing ever after at the very recollection. 

In these countries as in France, the tra- 
velling on the public roads is under the 
direction of the government, and very strict 
regulations exist as to the kind of carria- 
ges, the number of horses, and of the pas- 
sengers. Among some items of informa- 
tion in these regulations, are mentioned the 
places where the carriage wheels are to be 
greased, and the fee that is to be paid on 
the occasion by the surprised traveller. AH 
the guide books contain the rules of posting 
but they are so minute and various, that it 
would weary the patience of the reader to 
attempt their enumeration. 

The roads of Sweden are said to be 
excellent and equal to those of England. 
They are constructed of stone with which 
the country abounds, and are laid out by 
skilful engineers. In Russia internal im- 
provenjents are going on, although they 
are not yet very widely disseminated. The 
arts of war appear to be most in favor 
with the government. A few roads are 
made on scientific principles, but the high 
road from St. Petersburgh to Moscow is 



94 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

only an elevated causeway of timber in 
one long unvarying line, over marsh and 
river, forest and field; and as it is construct- 
ed of logs joined together, it is in many 
places extremely rough. The trade of the 
interior is chiefly conducted by means of 
the rivers and canals during the few months 
they are navigable, or in winter by the use 
of sleds, over roads impassable at other 
seasons. One of the consequences of this 
state of things is very long credits to mer- 
chants living in the interior, because they 
cannot reach the commercial ports without 
great inconvenience and loss of time, and 
therefore they rarely come. 

The roads of South America are scarcely 
to be considered such, and are only really 
good in the vicinity of very large towns. 
The traffic of the interior is carried on by 
the tedious aid of mules. The roads of some 
of the Eastern nations, such as China and 
of the Asiatic Islands, as already stated, 
are not Avithout interest in the eyes of trav- 
ellers, but throw little light on the scientific 
or commercial portion of our subject. 

The roads of our own country have es- 
sentially changed their character within a 
few years past. They were passable in 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 95 

summer and winter from the very nature of 
the soil and the climate, but in the spring 
and autumn, they were proverbially bad. 
Happily for us our numerous lakes and riv- 
ers, afforded facilities for transportation and 
travel to such a degree, as to make the 
evils of land carriage much more tolerable 
than they would otherwise have been. Ac- 
counts are preserved of journies made in 
the 17th century, between the then princi- 
pal towns of our country, which required 
the exercise of so much patience, and con- 
sumed so much time, as to make the effort 
almost an act of heroism on the part of the 
travellers. 

After the year 1803 a great many turn- 
pike roads were constructed throughout the 
northern states. 

The state of Connecticut incorporated 
a large number, and the cost of their con- 
struction varied from ^500 to $2280 a mile. 
This was the expenditure on the road from 
New Haven to Hartford. 

The income in 1809 was eleven per cent 
on the capital expended, as appears from 
an elaborate report of Mr. Gallatin, then 
secretary of the treasury of the United 
States. 



96 TREATISE ON ROADS, 

The roads of Massachusetts were more 
expensive, some of them cost no less than 
$14,000 per mile. Those to Salem, New- 
buryport and Providence w^ere of the best 
class. The grades were carefully adjusted 
at an angle no where exceeding 5 deg., and 
the surface was covered with broken stone. 
A speed of ten miles an hour was usual 
with the coaches on these lines. The route 
from Boston to Newburyport was the ad- 
miration of travellers: where an expense of 
$400,000 was incurred on a distance of but 
thirty-two miles. 

In our own state the mania for turnpikes 
became excessive. During a period of seven 
years, sixty-seven companies were incorpo- 
rated, with a capital of five millions of dol- 
lars, and liberty to construct three thousand 
miles of road. 

Since 1810, upwards of two hundred and 
and sixty more have been incorporated with 
large capitals. 

The direction of these roads was towards 
the lakes and along the rivers of the inte- 
rior. Some of them were very expensive, 
sucli as that between Albany and Schenec- 
tady, which was made at an expense of 
$10,000 per mile and upwards, the actual 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 97 

cost of those in the interior averaged much 
less, generally not exceeding $2500, or $3,- 
000 per mile. Some of them were very 
profitable. The road from Utica to Canan- 
daigua paid for many years a handsome 
profit to the stockholders. Generally they 
have never remunerated their proprietors, 
nor paid much more than the expense of 
actual repairs. 

By the revision of the statute lavs^s of 
this state, a complete code for the regulation 
of turnpikes and highways has been put in 
operation. 

There is a large number of provisions in 
relation to turnpikes, as will be seen by 
reference to the law contained in the ap- 
pendix. 

Some of the principal features are as 
follows : 

After the incorporation is obtained, the 
road is to be laid out by three commission- 
ers appointed by the governor, having no 
interest in any turnpike, and not being re- 
sidents of the county through which the 
road is to pass. 

The width is prescribed to four rods, ex- 
cept in unavoidable circumstances, and nev- 
13 



98 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

er less than twenty-two feet. The material 
is also prescribed; stone, sound wood, or oth- 
er hard substance, well compacted and suffi- 
ciently deep to secure a good foundation, 
the surface to be faced with gravel or bro- 
ken stone of nine inches deep, rising with a 
gradual arch in the centre. 

The law regulates the ditches, milestones, 
guide boards, the assessments for land taken, 
the tolls, the tire of carriages and other 
matters of a similar nature. All persons 
going to church, or a funeral, their usual 
grist mill or black-smith shop, to their phy- 
sician, to court as a witness or juror, to 
an election or town meeting, and those lir- 
ving within one mile of a gate if passing on 
their own business, all state and national 
troops, are exempted from paying tolls. 
The common roads or highways of the state 
are regulated by one hundred and thirty- 
two sections of the Revised Statutes and 
subjected to the control of commissioners 
and overseers of highways. ' The commis- 
sioners have power to lay out and discon- 
tinue roads, to divide towns into districts, 
to assess road labor on land owners and 
resident males of the age of twenty-one 
years. The overseers have the special du- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 99 

ties of superintendents. Many other provi- 
sions exist for the maintenance and govern- 
ment of the roads, to which w^e must refer 
those vv^ho wish fully to understand the 
details. 

New Jersey, under the same impetus, un- 
dertook the construction of turnpikes. The 
great thoroughfare was between Trenton 
and Brunswick. Here the angle of ascent 
was not greater than three degrees in any 
place. The expense averaged about $2,- 
500 per mile. Another was extended from 
Brunswick to Easton on the Delaware, but 
long before its completion, the original funds 
of the company were exhausted. 

Pennsylvania did not hold back at this 
period. Numerous ''stone" roads were made 
throughout the state. The Bristol and 
Trenton, the German and Perkiomen, the 
Lancaster, Columbia and Pittsburg roads 
were all considered important public works. 
To some of these the state made subscrip- 
tions of money and of credit. The angles 
of the grades were about four degrees. 
Some of the roads cost ^10,000 per mile, and 
others 14,000. The tolls received were not 
enough to pay the interest and cost of re- 
pairs. It appears that the lower stratum 



100 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

of these roads was generally broken stone 
of the diameter of five inches. The one 
above it of half that diameter, and the two 
in some instances were nearly thirty inches 
thickness. The surface of the roads had a 
slight convexity, and was sometimes covered 
at top with gravel. Whatever the defects 
of construction might be in view of the pre- 
sent received systems of Telford and McAd- 
am, the Pennsylvania roads enjoyed a high 
reputation, and the metropolis felt their good 
effects, in the great extension of her internal 
trade, the enhanced value of her property, 
and the increased magnitude of her re- 
sources. 

The roads of Maryland were also pushed 
forward with great spirit. Some of them 
cost $2,000, some $7,000 and others $10,000 
a mile on an average. The great road was 
that of Frederickton, designed to divert the 
western trade, and by connection with the 
Cumberland road to reach the navigable 
waters of the Ohio. The principles of con- 
struction were the same as those adopted 
in Pennsylvania. South of the Potomac 
but little was effected, and up to the present 
time, with the exception of a few rail-roads, 
the Southern states have not done much to 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 101 

increase their home trade, or the facilities 
of intercommunication. 

The Cumberland road which runs from 
a town in Maryland on the Potomac to 
Wheeling on the Ohio, was made at the 
expense of the nation, and cost them ^1,- 
800,000. As late as the year 1831 the 
enormous sum of $200,000 and upwards, 
w^as appropriated to its repair. The utility 
of this road is no longer doubted, and though 
it is debated whether the constitution con- 
tains any authority for its construction, yet 
annual expenditures are still authorized in 
the face of the objection, for the improve- 
ment of this and other roads in the western 
and southern states. In an able report of 
the committee on roads and canals made to 
the House of Representatives in 1822, and 
attributed to the pen of Judge Hemphill of 
Pennsylvania, the constitutional power of 
Congres sis there ably, though only inciden- 
tally asserted. 

In the message of Governor De Witt Clin- 
ton to the legislature of this state in the 
year 1818, he remarked the imperfections of 
the then existing turnpike laws of our own 
state, and stated that the condition of the 
roads was a "subject of general and well 
founded complaint." 



102 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

In his message the following year, he par- 
ticularly calls upon the legislature to en- 
courage the construction of roads, " as an 
incumbent duty and a beneficial exercise of 
power." Again in 1820, he urged on their 
attention the establishment of roads and 
bridges, by all the motives which suggested 
themselves to his powerful and comprehen- 
sive mind. So far from exhibiting himself 
as the exclusive friend of canals, it will be 
found on examination, that the subject of 
roads was with him a constant source of so- 
licitude and a frequent theme of solicitation. 
To his influence, we may indeed attribute 
most of the reforms which took place in the 
existing laws with reference to this subject. 

The present generation do not realise all 
the greatness of De Witt Clinton. A de- 
gree of familiarity with his person, a know- 
ledge of his want of political address, and 
prejudices embittered by party strife have 
made us less sensible of his merit than we 
should have been, had his position in public 
life been entirely independent of popular 
caprice. But though he was doomed to ex- 
perience many of the severer ills of life, and 
to suffer the consequences of being in ad- 
vance of the age, its information and its 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 103 

opinions, though he went to his grave with 
a consciousness that his labors and his poli- 
cy, were not all fully appreciated, posterity, 
that impartial judge, will do hira justice; and 
the state of New- York will one day feel 
that its highest glory, and its proudest hoast 
are these, that here was his birth place, 
here his sphere of action. Mere politicians 
may wax and wane through their phases of 
official greatness, but the name of Clinton 
shall survive place and placemen, to be the 
veneration and love of all succeeding time. 
The increase of our population, however, 
required additional facilities, not to be ob- 
tained by the slow operation of wagon trans- 
portation. The long trains drawn by six 
or eight horses, occupying several weeks in 
a journey, now performed with the heaviest 
articles in a few days, were not characteris- 
tic of our citizens, nor adapted to the neces- 
sities of our country. The canals, those 
honorable monuments of the well directed 
energies, and the well sustained credit of 
our state, supplied the more urgent demands 
of commerce. These after fertilizing and 
enriching our western domain, pour into the 
public coffers an imperial revenue. But the 
later adoption of rail-roads has made the 



104 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

system of intercommunication perfect. With 
their usual energy, the American people 
have seized upon it at once, and in this we 
have already outstripped our competitors, 
and surpassed our teachers. 

This invention distinguishes modern times 
from all others. The ancients have been 
considered by enthusiastic classicists, as the 
true mental giants, and the moderns but 
dwarfs in comparison. But it has been well 
remarked that if the moderns are dwarfs, 
they have mounted on the shoulders of their 
predecessors, and have attained, therefore, 
a much greater elevation. It is very singu- 
lar however, that the greatest improvements 
are resolvable into the simplest elementary 
principles. In statuary, for instance, the 
perfection of the art consists in its close 
resemblance to the simplicity of nature. 
Some of the finest improvements in mecha- 
nics owe their origin to the contrivances of 
the animal frame; and rail-roads that seem 
about to revolutionize the relations of socie- 
ty, and " annihilate time and distance" (as 
once was the prayer of romantic love,) are 
resolvable into the simple effects of smooth- 
ness and hardness, two of tiie most familiar 
of the qualities of matter, To these the 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 108 

power of steam has at last been made ap- 
plicable, and it finds a limitless field for its 
operations. 

The subject of rail roads has called forth 
so many writers whose works are within 
every one's reach, that the attempt to treat 
it other than in a general way, would now 
be but a loss of time. Suffice it to say, that 
they have existed in England since 1676, if 
not earlier, although their real utility re- 
mained unsuspected until a few years past. 
Of course they were originally of the rudest 
character, and used principally for the trans- 
portation of coals from the mines to some 
place of shipment. One hundred years af- 
terwards they were improved at the Shef* 
field collieries by the addition of iron plates 
to the w^ooden rails. In 1797 stone founda- 
tions for the superstructure were adopted by 
Mr. Barnes at the New-Castle mines, and in 
18Q0, they were used in Derbyshire. The 
first clear manifestation of their utility was 
evident in 1825 through the successful opera- 
tions of the Stockton and Darlington rail- 
wayj and in 1830 the Liverpool and Manches- 
ter road went into operation, surpassing in all 
respects the warmest anticipations of it» 
14 



106 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

friends. Other great roads have since been 
completed in England, particularly that be- 
tween London and Birmingham. Some small 
ones are in successful operation in Ireland, 
and the plan of a grand route across the island 
from Valentia, the projected port of the At- 
lantic steam packets, is also under discussion. 
They have been introduced into France, Bel- 
gium, and Russia, and will probably become 
universal throughout Europe. 

A considerable number have been con- 
structed in our own country, and are in suc- 
cessful operation. It would be needless to 
take up time by a minute description of the 
American rail roads, since the encyclope- 
dias, guides, and pocket books of the coun- 
try, abound with details, maps and profiles of 
all the most celebrated. 

An important and as yet an unsettled con- 
troversy has arisen abroad in relation to the 
comparative merits of rail roads and canals, 
and the debate was at one time equally 
warm in the United States. Tables have 
been constructed by which it is shewn that 
at a speed under three miles an hour, the ad- 
vantages of horse power upon canals is as 4 
to 3 in favor of the latter. Above that ve- 
locity the advantages rapidly increase in fa- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 107 

vor of rail roads. At a rate of twenty miles 
an hour they are preferable to canals in the 
ratio of 5 to 1. Over turnpikes they have a 
still more decided advantage, the item of fric- 
tion alone being twenty times less, according 
to Dr. Lardner, on the one than the other. 

The developement however of a new law 
of resistance, inferred from actual experi- 
ments made, in Scotland upon the canals of 
that country, had a tendency to make spe- 
culators more wary for a time in the pur- 
chase of rail- way shares. We say for a time 
only, because the confidence in rail-ways is 
now greater than ever, and England will be 
soon traversed by them in all directions. 

In 1830 a species of light craft, made of 
sheet iron, and called swift boats, were con- 
structed to ply at a speed of nine and a half 
miles an hour, upon the Paisley canal, where 
at this time, an average speed of ten miles is 
said to be maintained. The canal is shal- 
low, narrow and crooked, and only twelve 
miles in length. The boats are seventy feet 
long, five feet six inches broad, the roofs are 
of wood covered with oiled canvass, and the 
hulls are formed of light iron ribs and plates. 
They usually carry seventy passengers, but 
sometimes have as many as one hundred and 



108 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

ten. The entire cost of each is $625, and 
the value of the two horses that draw them 
in stages of four miles each, is $250 a pair. 
They travel this distance in twenty-two 
minutes, and each team performs its route 
about four times a day. It is asserted that 
the actual cost of each boat, including in- 
terest of capital, deduction for sinking fund, 
wear and tear, and indeed every item of ex- 
pense, is but £2 2s. 4d, per day, while the 
receipts at a penny per mile for each passen- 
ger in the best cabin, alone amount to £4 
per day. 

Experiments were carefully made by Mr. 
McNeill, the author of a work on the resist^ 
ance to the passage of boats on canals and 
other bodies of water, to ascertain the truth 
of the long received law that the resistance 
is as the square of the velocity. By the use 
of his dynamometer, the speed of an iron 
passage boat weighing three and a half tons 
and drawn by two horses, at the rate of ten 
miles and a fraction of a half mile per hour 
indicated a resistance of 285 lbs. and a frac^ 
tion over, when by the old theory it should 
have been 429 lbs. The cause of this dis- 
parity is explained by the emergence of the 
boat from the water, but this has not been 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 109 

mathematically demonstrated. One result 
developed itself as a consequence of this 
new principle, that a horse could do 270 per 
cent more work on a canal than is allowed 
by Tredgold, and 750 per cent more than al- 
lowed by Wood. The attendant ripple of 
these boats is said not to be greater than 
that of a canal boat moving at the rate of 
four miles an hour. The system of light 
boats has been introduced in England, after 
having been successfully tried on the princir 
pal canals of Scotland. 

In a very entertaining and useful work re- 
cently published by Sir George Head, a bro- 
ther of Sir Francis, the performance of the 
English boats is particularly stated. The 
Arrow, built after the Scotch model, and 
drawing but twelve inches of water with 
forty passengers and all their luggage, plies 
on the Carlisle and Annan canal at the uni- 
form rate of ten miles an hour. 

Two similar boats, the Waterwitch and 
Swiftsure, ran upon the canal from Preston 
to Kendall, and accomplished a distance 
of fifty-seven miles, passing seven or eight 
locks, in seven hours. In these instances, he 
describes the fatigue of the horses as being 
distressing and injurious in the extreme, 



110 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

and he seems to think that the injury done 
them a great and decided draw-back to the 
supposed gain of speed. 

Although the advantages of rail-ways in 
the transportation of passengers and light ar- 
ticles are well understood, and indeed much 
more than these are claimed for them by 
very eminent writers, many things are yet 
to be tested before their maximum effect 
can be realized. As an example, engineers 
yet differ whether it is best to concentrate 
the inequalities of a grade in one part of the 
line of road, or spread them over the whole. 
Whether stationary engines are most econo- 
mical and convenient, or whether additional 
locomotive power should generally be em- 
ployed in their stead. Some eminent per- 
sons contend that where the inclination ex- 
ceeds twenty-one feet in a mile, the same 
power will transport a weight either way 
equally well, and is the same that would 
be necessary for an equal distance on a 
level rail-way. Where speed is preferable 
to other considerations it is best unqestiona- 
bly to use locomotive engines to the full 
extent of their capability. Dr. Lardner es- 
timated its limit of usefulness to a grade of 
fifty feet in the mile, and contends that 



TREATISE ON ROADS. Ill 

beyond that stationary engines are neces- 
sary. Tliis however is denied. Satisfac- 
tory experiments have been made in this 
country to show that grades of much greater 
elevation may be successfully worked by 
locomotives of American construction. Mr. 
Baldwin of Philadelphia has produced them 
of sufficient power to ascend an inclined 
plane of 2745^ feet, having an elevation of 
187fo feet in that distance, being upwards of 
350 feet in a mile, at full speed, with a train 
of cars containing passengers. The details 
of that experiment not being within reach, 
it may be well to refer to a similar one 
made by an engine manufactured by Mr. 
Norris of Philadelphia, upon the same plane. 
It ascended with two cars and sixty-three 
passengers in three minutes and fifteen se- 
conds. The gross weight including engine 
and tender was 48,500 lbs. On descending, 
eighty more passengers were added to the 
load, and yet the engine and train were found 
perfectly under control, and were three 
times brought to a dead stop at the plea- 
sure of the engineer, and to the astonish- 
ment of all present. Several of our most 
important rail-ways are graded in some parts 
of their lines as high as eighty feet to the 



112 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

mile, and are in successful operation. The 
great western rail-way to connect Boston 
and Albany is graded on this principle. It 
is not proper however to consider this sub- 
ject as entirely settled, since the opinions of 
scientific men are still at variance in relation 
to it 

Another consideration connected with the 
construction of rail-ways has not been suffi- 
ciently attended to, the necessity of having 
the best preliminary surveys. If after a line 
is marked out, a better one is discovered, an 
absolute loss to the proprietors will have 
accrued by the difference of the cost of con- 
struction, and the wear and tear of trans- 
portation, which might have been avoided. 
Many of our roads have been laid out too 
hastily. A very high degree of talent is 
necessary in this department of civil engi- 
neering, and scientific attainments of the 
most profound character will find themselves 
fully employed. The mathematician here 
finds the value of his previous studies. He 
is called upon to put in practice his know- 
ledge of curves, of resistance, of gravity, and 
motion. How beneficial the change of this 
direction of his studies. Too often employ- 
ed in calculations, which have tended to 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 113 

render the bullet more certain and the shell 
more deadly, he now traces out the lines 
of a peacefully travelled road, where the 
quiet pursuits of life are hastened to a pros- 
perous conclusion. 

A good engineer is not only a theorist 
but a practical man. He ascertains the 
amount of transportation ascending and de- 
scending, the character of the country, the 
nature of the soil, its products, the facility 
of material, of draining, the necessity if 
any of deflections in the line of his road, the 
number and location of the curve^s, and each 
particular involves the most extensive and 
careful calculations. 

The details of construction have also their 
questions. The best kinds of rails, their 
weight and form, the most suitable guage 
the strength of the various materials, the 
form of embankments, of viaducts, the best 
sidelongs or turnouts, require great experi- 
ence and skill in the engineer. 

When the road is finished, then come oth- 
er embarrassments. The force of effective 
traction, of friction, the form, stability and 
power of locomotive engines, present them- 
selves for consideration. Volumes are writ- 
ten on these points and there is yet room for 
15 



114 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

more. There are upwards of sixty different 
kinds of locomotive engines known to sci- 
entific men; and their various pretensions 
and the principles of their construction are 
subjects of continued interest. It is indeed 
astonishing to think what a field has been 
opened to research by the application of 
steam to the propulsion of locomotive and 
marine engines, A recent writer of emi- 
nence excused himself for entering upon the 
subject, by hinting, how much was yet to be 
reduced to general principles, in the opera- 
tions of rail-way engines. Thus the pres- 
sure of steam in the boilers, hitherto thought 
to be invariable in the same engine, the in- 
dications of the safety valve, the pressure of 
steam in the cylinders, the evaporating pow- 
er, the lead of the slide, or in other words, 
the amount of opening left in the induction 
valves purposely to produce an easier and 
swifter motion of the piston rods, a rule of 
equation determining the practical power of 
an engine, the velocity and load of a loco- 
motive, the form of the wheels best adapted 
to passing curves^ their size as best adapted 
to speed, and the consumption of fuel, are 
matters not fully understood and not yet per- 
fectly systematised. In time these and oth- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 115 

er difficulties will have been overcome by 
talent and experience. 

That a constantly high rate of interest 
can be expected from investments in rail 
roads is we believe an error which time will 
rectify. Under the best possible manage- 
ment, the expenses can never be brought to 
an invariable standard. Such must be the 
number of agents, such the necessity of con- 
stant renovation, such the casualties, and 
such the wear and tear of the operating 
power, that entire certainty can not be ex- 
pected. But few cases have occurred where 
the outlay has kept within the estimates of 
the engineers. Perhaps this is all for the 
best. For did any one pursuit of men as- 
sure unerringly a higher profit than the rest, 
all would make it their business. 

No investment contrived by human inge- 
nuity ever produced uniform results. Even 
the gold finder often ascertains to his satis- 
faction that his is a losing occupation. So of 
rail roads. Their utility will commend them 
to the favor of the public, and if they should 
fall below the standard of profit which the 
sanguine have assigned them, they will be- 
come the property of capitalists who seek 
less returns for their money, than the mere 



116 TREATIS^E ON ROADS. 

speculator, or he owned by the States in 
which they are constructed. These can 
afford to overlook the mere advantage of 
income, in the general prosperity they dif- 
fuse among the people. 

But there are other Adews of this subject 
which are equally striking in a political 
sense. 

The vast increase of rail-ways as the 
most useful and expeditious mode of con- 
veyance, will tend in a great degree to the 
neglect of the turnpikes and country roads. 
This will, in fact, subject the business and 
convenience of the public to the rules and 
regulations of private companies ; for if the 
existing highways become impassable from 
neglect, or through the superiority of rail- 
way conveyances in their neighborhood, 
either they must be kept in repair by the 
few who continue to use them, which may 
prove a heavy burthen, or else the public 
should have some control over the rail-ways 
which they are thus in a measure compelled 
to travel. It is therefore a wholesome pro- 
vision in some charters, that the roads au- 
thorised by them, may become public pro- 
perty at a future day, upon repayment of 
the capital, with an interest of ten or fifteen 
per cent per annum. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 117 

The permanency of these structures is a 
question much agitated. In Europe they 
are much more expensively constructed than 
in our own country, and some of the staunch 
advocates of legitimate thrones, and the 
political ascendancy of an aristocracy of 
church and state, contend that the slight- 
ness of our rail road structures, is the result 
of our institutions, and the constitution of 
our society. They say that our rail roads 
are projected in the consciousness of the 
uncertainty of our government, and that our 
"lives, laws, securities, private engagements, 
public treaties, religion, morality and all, 
float upon the uncertain will and irresistible 
passions of the multitude." 

This is a superficial remark. The reasons 
which operate on the minds of capitalists are 
these, that to make an investment in a rail- 
way which should not bring a rate of inter- 
est equal to that ordinarily received from 
other investments, would be an act of folly, 
and such a one as no English capitalist 
would make in his own country. The se- 
cret with us lies in the deficiency of capital. 
When we have acquired as much private 
wealth as England, and a low rate of inter- 
est becomes universal, then our rail-ways 



lis TREATISE ON ROADS. 

will be built at as great an expense as hers, 
but not before. An outlay which will here 
return ten per cent, would bring but two, if 
the expense of construction were increased 
five-fold. 

That the instability of our institutions does 
not affect this question, is evident from the 
expenditures every where made on our pub- 
lic buildings, bridges, churches and canals. 
And those British writers who assert that 
we look with " admiration and envy" on 
those institutions of theirs which protect 
" the property of the few from the Briarian 
fingers of the many," forget one grand prin- 
ciple of our institutions, which is that the 
many have no inducement to plunder the few; 
no unequal or unjust laws compel them to be 
hewers of wood and drawers of water to a 
privileged order, or to give place to the arti- 
ficial creations of society, which have no real 
or just foundation. Property must be more 
secure here than in any other country of the 
world, because it cannot be taken away by 
taxation without consent of the owners, and 
because it is the interest of every citizen, 
that his own earnings should be protected, 
in order that he himself may acquire proper- 
ty. This a principle seated so deeply in hu- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 119 

man nature as not to allow any doubt upon 
the subject. 

On the contrary, in that country where its 
wealth lies in a few hands, and by its very 
institutions and laws must be there for 
ever retained, where the majority of its peo^ 
pie are condemned to hopeless poverty, there 
is far greater danger of the insecurity of pro- 
perty than any other. Nothing but an out- 
let to the mass of the discontented by emi^ 
gration and colonization has kept, or can 
keep such a country from revolution. 

To return from this digression, it follows- 
that if the public interests should prove to 
be impaired by this practical monopoly of 
the right of way, and by the fixing of the 
time, the place and the mode of travelling, 
at the option of the carriers rather than the 
carried, it is urged that they should in some 
way be regulated by the public authorities 
and subjected to scientific control. 

The Columbia rail road, which is the pro^- 
perty of the State of Pennsylvania and i& 
under the direction of the sate authorities,, 
now pays its incidental expenses, and the 
interest of the capital. It has proved of 
vast importance to the public even at a time* 
when its receipts were not remunerating, and 



120 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

it must continue to be an important tho- 
rough-fare. 

Another consideration connected with the 
subject, is tlie question of the successful ap- 
plication of steam to the propulsion of car- 
riages upon turnpike roads, and the effect 
this may have on rail-ways. Many such en- 
gines have been built, and some have actual- 
ly plied for months together. Treatises writ- 
ten by confident inventors have been pub- 
lished from time to time, asserting their ad- 
vantages, and the certainty of success, and 
parliamentary inquiries have been made at 
great length to ascertain the truth of these 
pretensions. 

It may be safely predicted of this branch 
of locomotion, that much yet remains to be 
accomplished before it can compete even on 
the best turnpikes, with locomotion upon 
rail- ways. 

Having now briefly discussed our subject, 
it may be expedient to allude to one other 
consideration, that of the unceasing opposi- 
tion, which men of contracted views offer to 
the extension of the general system of inter- 
nal improvement. This opposition is as old 
as civilization, and perhaps is a useful ingre- 
dient in the composition of society. Were 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 121 

there no gravity, and no friction, the very 
tendencies of matter would become danger- 
ous, and were there no croakers and no 
sceptics, we should perhaps be the creatures 
of imagination and of hope. Still as there 
is enough of doubt in the world, to keep 
down the enthusiasm of genius, especially 
where it attempts to erect its fabrics with 
the wealth of others, the friends of society 
and the advocates of internal improvement 
must not relax their efforts, nor their argu- 
ments, if they w^ish to see the march of im* 
provement continue. It may therefore safe* 
ly be laid down as an axiom, that whatever 
creates business, facilitates intercourse, and 
unites communities, tends to their comfort 
and advantage, and confers benefits upon 
men, of value infinitely beyond an esti- 
mate in dollars and cents. No statesman, 
ho people, no government can go wrong in 
thus consulting the public good. Every 
measure founded on this basis, will stand 
the "test of scrutiny and time." 

Nor is another consideration unworthy of 

notice, that the expenditure of money in 

public improvements is not a loss of the 

amount expended, nor is a debt based on a 

16 



122 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

productive work an evil of the character it 
has been assumed to be. The opponents of 
the Erie canal talked of the State debt it 
was about to create, as a measure of cer- 
tain destruction to the prosperity of the peo- 
ple. They did not understand that vis me- 
dicatrix in political economy, by which such 
expenditures of capital are replaced; nor 
knew that the voluntary contributions of 
trade, commerce, and travel upon our estab- 
lished thoroughfares make up in a short 
time, sums equal to the most liberal outlay 
of capital. 

The Erie canal has not only repaid its 
cost, and furnished means for other improve- 
ments, while it also remains the property of 
the public, but the very money which it cost 
that public, has, to more than an equal 
amount been gained in the enhancement of 
values in its vicinity, in the increased profit 
of land, the establishment of towns and ci- 
ties, mills and manufactories, and the em- 
ployment furnished a large and increasing 
population. 

It is possible another objection may be 
taken to the prosecution of works of inter- 
nal improvement — that they have a ten- 
dency to increase unequally the wealth of 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 123 

certain portions of tlie community. The 
philosophy of some minds is to oppose all 
measm'es, which appear to remunerate capi- 
tal as well as labor. 

This is an unworthy spirit in a country 
where labor becomes capital sooner than in 
any other in the world. Let us suppose that 
the most radical of the Roman agrarians 
were amongst us, and could induce us to 
adopt his theory in its widest sense. 

Suppose our roads and canals were blot- 
ted from our maps, and each citizen lived 
exclusively for himself. However independ- 
ent in his feelings, or desirou>s of remaining 
so, he would find his own ingenuity and 
personal exertion insufficient to supply some 
of his most urgent w^ants : nor is this all, he 
could not find leisure, even if he had ingenui- 
ty. He must either forego at once the ac- 
customed enjoyments of life, or be content 
with an existence no better than semi-bar- 
barous. A bad crop or a sick family would 
plunge him into the deepest distress. Did 
he seek employment as a means of relieving 
his wants, he would be compelled to await 
his remuneration at the pleasure of his em- 
ployer, who would be equally dependent on 
his own labor, or his expected crop. For no 



124 TREATISE ON ROADS. 

man could have a supply on hand, the ac- 
cumulation of property being contrary to 
the fundamental principles of agrarianism. 

The unavoidable tendency of this state of 
things would be to reduce the motives of 
men to the mere object of obtaining food 
and clothing, and any attempt to surpass 
their neighbors in the abundance or quality 
of either, would also be resented as an at- 
tempt to create wealth in an undue degree, 

Upon tracing out the inevitable conse-- 
quences of this principle, we perceive that 
ignorance and squalid poverty would pos^^ 
sess the land, the intellectual would yield to 
the physical, and all the high impulses of 
our nature be sacrificed to but little better 
than animal instinct. 

We have examples of semi-barbarism, 
teaching us its degradation in the annals of 
almost every nation. The nearer we go 
back to periods, when internal improve- 
ments were unknown, and the objects of 
men were mere existence, the more degrad- 
ed do we find their condition. 

In the times of the early Britons who re- 
trograded in civilization after the departure 
of the Romans, it is evident that though 
they were unquestionably actuated by a 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 125 

high love of freedom, they never knew its 
real advantages. Ignorant of the arts of 
peace, and the benefits of a commercial 
system, they were compelled in their deal- 
ings with each other to rely on what was 
termed animal money, as the medium of 
exchange. So little had they advanced 
in the arts of life, that they graduated 
a scale of prices for their domestic ani- 
mals, which were received in payment of 
their debts. It is not worth while to allude 
to the nature of such a currency as this, and 
its utter inapplicability to the wants of a 
refined and intelligent people. However 
much the system of credit may be derided, 
we imagine no one at the present day 
would advocate the adoption of "animal 
money." 

While other nations boast of their anti- 
quity, we rejoice in the strength of our 
youth, and in the energy of our purpose. 

Others may point to their piles of mason- 
ry, which have occupied centuries in con- 
struction, and quote their ruins as the proofs 
of early civilization. We aim at no such 
distinction. We are for making life, brief 
as it is, the means of infinite good, and 
giving to its ordinary limits, opportunities, 



126 TREATISE ON ROADS, 

privileges and enjoyments, wiiich mere an- 
tiquity could never give. 

The opening of communications is one of 
the first duties of any country which desires 
to increase its wealth, its resources and its 
power. Without them, no permanent ad- 
vances can be made. 

Let our course then be onward. If all 
we have accomplished as a nation, or as 
communities is but the work of yesterday, 
let us not forget that it is equally in our 
power, to have a bright to-day, and a still 
more glorious to-morroio. 



APPENDIX, 



APPENDIX 



NOTE. 



In order to render the foregoing treatise more gen- 
erally useful than it would otherwise be, this appen- 
dix is added, containing some particulars in relation 
to the subject discussed, which could not be conven- 
iently inserted in any other place. 



PAVEMENTS. 

The following are the different kinds of pavements 
known and described in the works of English road 
makers. 

1. Pebble paving, used in ornamental design, done 
with kidney shaped stones, obtained from Guernsey, 
and when well laid, extremely durable. 

2. Rag paving, with stone obtained from Maidstone, 
Kent, whence the name Kentish Ragstone. There 
are square stones of this material for coach tracks and 
footways. This kind of paving was once much used 
in London. 

17 



130 APPENDIX. 

3. Purbeck pitchers. Stones from 6 to 10 inches 
square, and 5 deep, brought from the island of Pur- 
beck, and used in Court yards. 

4. Square paving : being of cubical stones of bkie 
whynn — called Scotch paving — out of use. 

5. Scotch granite : used for the London road pave- 
ments. 

6. Guernsey and Herm blue granite. Extensive 
quarries are now opened to supply the London mar- 
ket. The stones are dressed in form of a prismoid, 
and laid with the ends down, bedded in gravel. 

7. Purbeck paving, of blue stone in large surfaces 
2i inches thick, used for flags. 

8. Yorkshire paving, of large dimensions, imper- 
vious to water, and unaffected by frost. 

9. Ptyegate or fire stone paving : used for hearths, 
stoves and ovens. 

10. New Castle flags : about 2 feet square and 2 
inches thick, for out door offices. 

11. Portland paving — from Portland: sometimes 
interspersed with black dots. 

12. Swedland paving : a black slate dug in Leices- 
tershire, much used in paving halls and party color 
paving. 

13. Marble paving : party colored, mosaic, or plain. 

14. Flat brick paving : laid in sand and mortar, or 
grouted. 

15. Brick-on-edge paving. 

16. Bricks laid in herring-bone fashion. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 131 

17. Bricks set endwise. 

18. Paving bricks prepared specially for the pur- 
pose. 

19. Ten inch tiles. 

20. Foottiles- 

21. Clinkers: used in stables. 

Nor are these all : numerous inventions applicable 
to these and other materials, all have their reputation 
and supporters. 



ASPHALTUM. 

The mineral bitumen used for the composition of 
cement, is procured chiefly from the Lower Rhine, 
from the Pare in the Department of Ain, and from the 
Puy de la poix, from the Puy de dome. Boiled Coal 
tar will do as well. In these localities, is found the 
limestone impregnated with bitumen, which gives 
consistency to the cement. It is well dried, ground 
to powder, sifted and stirred while hot, in about one- 
fifth its weight of melted asphaltum, contained in a 
cast iron boiler. Dry chalk or bricks, ground or sift- 
ed will do as well. As some of this paste is made 
homogeneous, it is lifted out with an iron shovel and 
spread in rectangular moulds, fastened on a surface of 
smoothed planks covered with sheet iron, the sides of 
the moulds being smeared with a thin coat of loam 
paste to prevent adhesion. When the composition 
cools, it is removed by an oblong spatula of iron, and 



132 APPENDIX. 

is then in the form of bricks 18 inches long, 12 broad, 
4 thick, of the weight of 70 lbs. each. 

URE. 



CONSTRUCTION OF ORDINARY ROADS. 

So much has recently been written, and so much 
said in order to enlighten the public mind on the 
subject of roads, that little remains to be done but to 
follow out the principles and practice of the most ap- 
proved Engineers of the old world. 

The subject presents itself in the following form : 
- Laying out of a Road. The first duty of the 
Surveyor is personally to inspect the proposed line 
and the country through which it passes. 

It may be laid down as a rule that the best line be- 
tween the two given points, is that which is shortest, 
most level and most easy of execution. This is vari- 
ed sometimes by the consideration of the cost of re- 
pairs, the amount of traffic to pass over it, the natural 
obstructions, such as hills, vallies and rivers. 

In laying out a road for the transportation of coun- 
try produce merely, due estimates must be made of the 
burthen to be carried, with the usual power of draught. 

On public roads, speed may be considered as the 
principal object in the calculation of the levels. 

Lines of road must not be made too tortuous, even 
to gain ease of draught, for there is danger to carri- 
ages from the suddenness of their turns, and the dan- 
ger of collision. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 133 

The true method of finding out the proper line of 
road, is to ascertain and mark at proper distances the 
straight hne : then, a search on either side of it for a 
better line, is easy and practicable ; and may be made 
with greater economy, in all respects. 

A competent surveyor should be employed to run 
the line, furnished with proper instruments and ma- 
terials. The memoranda of the field book should be 
protracted and laid down on a large scale. Some en- 
gineers recommend the adoption of 66 yards to the 
inch for the ground plan, and 30 feet to the inch for 
the vertical section. On the latter, should be marked 
the horizontal distances in miles, and the vertical 
heights in feet. 

Calculations should be made of the cubic yards of 
earth to be removed : the grades should be carefully 
adjusted ; the strata examined, and the character of 
the materials at hand for the work. 

According to Stevenson, and we believe to all 
the most scientific road engineers, a level straight 
road is decidedly the best. He says, "in an uphill 
draught, a carriage may be conceived as in a state of 
being continually lifted by increments proportional to 
its use or progress upon the road. Every one knows 
that on a stage of twelve miles, the post-boy generally 
saves, as it is termed, at least half an hour, upon the 
level road ; because on it he never requires to slacken 
his pace, as in going uphill. Now, if he, or his com- 
pany, would agree to take the same time to the level 
road, that they are obliged to take on the undulating 
one, the post-master would find no difficultv in detar- 



134 APPENDIX. 

mining which side of the argument was in favor of 
his cattle. With regard to the fatigues or ease of the 
horses, Mr. Stevenson upon one occasion submitted 
the subject to the consideration of a medical friend, 
(Dr. John Barclay of Edinburgh, no less eminent for 
his knowledge, than successful as a teacher of the 
science of comparative anatomy,) when the Doctor 
made the following answer: — 'My acquaintance 
with the muscles, by no means enables me to explain 
how a horse should be more fatigued by travelling on 
a road uniformly level, ttian by travelling over a like 
space upon one that crosses heights and hollows ; but 
it is demonstrably a false idea, that muscles can al- 
ternately rest, and come into motion, in cases of this 
kind. The daily practice of ascending heights, it has 
been said, gives the animal wind, and enlarges his 
chest. It may also, with equal truth, be affirmed, that 
many horses lose their wind under this sort of train- 
ing, and irrecoverably suffer from imprudent attempts 
to induce such a habit.' In short, the Doctor ascribes 
< much to prejudice originating with the man, con- 
tinually in quest of variety, rather than the horse, 
who, consulting only his own ease, seems quite un- 
conscious of Hogarth's Line of Beauty.' " — Report on 
the Edinburgh Railway. 

A dry foundation, and clearing the road from 
water, are two important objects, which, accord- 
ing to Walker, [Minutes of evidence before a Comjnit- 
tee of the House of Commons, 1819,) ought to be kept 
in view, in lining out roads, « For obtaining the first 
of these objects, it is essential that the line for the road 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 135 

be taken so that the foundation can be kept dry, either 
by avoiding low ground, by raising the surface of the 
road above the level of the ground on each side of it, 
or by drawing off the water by means of side drains. 
The other object, viz. that of clearing the road of wa- 
ter, is best secured by selecting a course for the road 
which is not horizontally level ; so that the surface of 
the road may, in its longitudinal section, form in some 
degree, an inclined plane : and when this cannot be 
obtained, owing to the extreme flatness of the country, 
an artificial inclination may generally be made. — 
When a road is so formed, every wheel-track that is 
made, being in the line of the inclination, becomes a 
channel for carrying off the water much more effec- 
tually than can be done by a curvature in the cross 
section, or rise in the middle of the road, without the 
danger or other disadvantages which necessarily at- 
tend the rounding of the road much in the middle. 
I consider a fall of about one inch and a half in ten 
feet, to be about a minimum in this case, if it is at- 
tainable without a great deal of extra expense. 

The ascent of kills, it is observed by Marshal, 
is the most difficult part of laying out roads. — 
According to theory he, says, an inclined plane of 
easy ascent, is proper ; but as the moving power on 
this plane is "neither purely mechanical, nor in a suf- 
ficient degree rational, but an irregular compound of 
these two qualities, the nature and habits of this pow- 
er" require a varied inclined plane, or one not a uni- 
form descent, but with levels or other proper places of 
rest. According to the road act, this ascent or de- 



136 APPENDIX. 

scent should not exceed the rate or proportion of one 
foot in height to thirty -five feet of the length thereof, 
if the same be practicable, without causing a great in- 
crease of distance. 

All crossings, intersections, and ahuttings of 
toads should be made at right angles, for the ob- 
vious purpose of facilitating the turning from one road 
to the other, or the more speedily crossing. Where 
roads cross each other obliquely, or where one road 
abuts on another at an acute angle, turning in or 
crossing can only be conveniently performed in one 
direction. 

In laying out a road over a hill or moitntaifi 
of angular figure and considerable height, much 
practical skill, as well as science, is requisite. In or- 
der to preserve a moderate inclination, or such a one 
as will admit of the descent of carriages without lock- 
ing the wheels, a much longer line will be required 
than the arc of the mountains. In reaching the sum- 
mit or the highest part to be passed over, the line 
must be extended by winding or zig-zaging it along 
the sides, so as never to exceed the maximum degree 
of steepness. This may occasion a very awkward 
appearance in a ground plan, but it is unavoidable in 
immense works. 

In laying out a road towards a river, stream, 
ravine, or any place requiring a bridge or embank- 
ment, an obvious advantage results from approaching 
them at right angles ; and the same will apply in re- 
gard to any part requiring tunnelling or crossing by 
an aqueduct, &c. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 137 

The loidth is obviously determinable by the 
nature and extent of the traffic : every road should be 
made sufficiently broad to admit two of the largest 
sized carriages which are in use in the country or dis- 
trict to pass each other ; and highways, and roads near 
towns, should be made wider in proportion to their 
use. The maximum and minimum can only be de- 
termined by experience ; sixty feet is the common and 
legal width of a turnpike-road in Britain, and this in- 
cludes the footpath. 

The strength of a road depends on the nature 
of the material of which it is formed, and of the 
basis on which it is placed. A plate of iron or stone, 
of the road's width, placed on a compact dry soil, 
would comprise everything in point of strength ; but 
as it is impracticable to employ plates of iron or stone 
of such a size to any extent, recourse is had to a stra- 
tum of small stones or gravel. The great art, there- 
fore, is to prepare this stratum, and place it on the 
basis of the road, as that the effect may come as near 
as possible to a solid plate of material. To accom- 
plish this, the stones or gravel should be broken into 
small angular fragments, and after being laid down of 
such a thickness as experience has determined to be 
of sufficient strength and durability, the whole should 
be so powerfully compressed by a roller, as to render it 
one compact body, capable of resisting the impression 
of the feet of animals and the wheels of carriages in 
a great degree, and impermeable by surface water. — 
But the base of the road may not always be firm and 
compressed ; in this case, it is to be rendered so by 
18 



138 APPENDIX. 

drainage, artificial pressure, and perhaps in some 
cases by other means. 

The durability of a road, as far as it depends on 
the original formation, will be in proportion to the 
solidity of its basis ; the hardness of the material of 
which the surface-stratum is formed ; its thickness, 
and the size and form of the stones which compose it. 
The form and size of the stones which compose the 
surface-stratum, have a powerful influence on a road's 
durability. If their form is roundish, it is evident 
they will not bind into a compact stratum ; if they are 
large, whether the form be round or angular, the stra- 
tum cannot be solid ; and if they are of mixed sizes and 
shapes, though a very strong and solid stratum maybe 
formed at first, yet the wheels of carriages and the feet 
of animals operating with unequal effect on the small 
and large stones, would soon derange the solidity of 
the stratum to a certain depth ; and, consequently, by 
admitting rain and frost to penetrate into it, accelerate 
its decay. A constant state of moisture, even without 
any derangement of surface, contributes to the wear- 
ing of roads by friction : hence one requisite to dura- 
bility is a free exposure to the sun and air, by keeping 
low the side fences ; and another is keeping a road 
clear of mud and dust — the first of which acts as a 
sponge in retaining water, and the second increases 
the draught of animals, and of course their action on 
the road. Both the strength and durability of a road 
will be greater when the plate or surface-stratum of 
metals is flat or nearly so, than when it is rounded on 
the upper surface : first, because no animal can stand 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 139 

upright on such a road with a regular bearing on the 
soles of its feet ; and, secondly, because no wheeled 
carriage can have a regular bearing, except on the 
middle or crown of the road. The consequence of 
both these states is the breaking of the surface of the 
plate into holes from the edges of horses' feet, or ruts 
from the plough-like effect of wheels on the lower side 
of the road, or the reiterated operation of those which 
pass along the centre. 

The smoothness of a road depends on the size 
of the stones, and on their compression, either by 
original rolling or the continued pressure of wheels. 
The continued smoothness of a road during its wear 
depends on small stones being used in every part of 
the stratum: for if the lower part of it, as is generally 
the case in the old style of forming roads, consists of 
larger stones, as soon as it is penetrated by the wheels 
or water from above, these stones will work up and 
produce a road full of holes and covered with loose 
stones. 

T7ie wear or decay of roads takes place in con- 
sequence of the friction, leverage, pressure, grind- 
ing, and incision of animals and machines, and the 
various effects of water and the weather. 



SUBJECT II. 
McADAM'S THEOEY AND rRACTICE OF ROAD-MAKIiVO. 

McAdam agrees with other engineers that a 
good road may be considered as an artificial flooring, 



140 APPENDlSr. 

forming a strong, solid, smooth-surfaced stratum, suf- 
ficiently flat to admit of carriages standing upright on 
any part of it, capable of carrying a great weight, and 
presenting no impediment to the animals or machines 
which pass along it. In forming this flooring, Mc- 
Adam has gone one step beyond his predecessors, in 
breaking the stone to a smaller size than was before 
practiced, and in forming the entire stratum of this 
small-sized stone. By the former practice a basement 
of large stones is first laid; then stones a degree 
smaller ; and, lastly, the least size on the surface. It 
is in this point of making use of one small size of 
stones throughout the stratum, that the originality of 
McAdam's plan consists, unless we add also his asser- 
tion, " that all the roads in the kingdom may be made 
smooth and solid in an equal degree, and to continue 
so at all seasons of the year." It is doubted by some, 
whether this would be the case in the northern dis- 
tricts at the breaking up of the frosts, and especially 
in the case of roads not much in use, and consequent- 
ly consisting of a stratum less consolidated, and more 
penetrable by water. McAdam, probably, has much 
frequented public roads in view. " The durabihty of 
these," he says, "will, of course depend on the 
strength of the materials of which they may be com- 
posed ; but they will all be good while they last ; and 
the only question that can arise respecting the kind 
of materials is one of duration and expense, but never 
of the immediate condition of the roads." [Remarks 
on Roads, (j^c. p. 11.) The following observation of 
Marshal is worthy of remark, as tending to confirm, 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 141 

to a certain extent, the doctrine of McAdam : — " It 
may seem needless to repeat, that the surface of a road 
which is formed of well broken stones, binding gravel, 
or other firmly cohesive materials, and which is much 
used, presently becomes repellant of the water which 
falls upon it ; no matter as to the basis on which they 
are deposited, provided it is sound and firm enough 
to support them." 

McAdam's theory of road-making may be com- 
prised in the following quotation from his Report 
to the Board of Agriculture, (vol. vi. p. 46): — 
''Roads can never be rendered perfectly secure until 
the following principles be fully understood, admit- 
ted, and acted upon : namely, that it is the native soil 
which really supports the weight of trafiic ; that while 
it is preserved in a dry state, it will carry any weight 
without sinking, and that it does, in fact, carry the 
road and the carriages also ; that this native soil must 
previously be made quite dry, and a covering impen- 
etrable to rain must then be placed over it, to preserve 
it in that dry state ; that the thickness of a road should 
only be regulated by the quantity of material neces- 
sary to form such impervious covering, and never by 
any reference to its own power of carrying weight. — 
There are some exceptions to this rule ; a road of 
good naturally binding gravel may be laid on a sub- 
bed of bog earth, which, from its tenacity, will carry 
all kinds of carriages for many years." 

The erroneous opinion so long acted upon, 
and so tenaciously adhered to, that by placing a 
large quantity of stone under the roads, a remedy will 



142 APPENDIX. 

be found for the sinking into wet clay or other soft 
soils ; or, in other words, that a road may be made 
sufficiently strong.^ artificially, to carry heavy carri- 
ages, though the sub-soil be in a wet state, and by 
such means to avert the inconveniences of the natural 
soil receiving water from rain or other causes has 
produced most of the defects of the roads of Great 
Britain. At one time, McAdam had formed the opin- 
ion that this practice was only a useless expense ; but 
experience has convinced him that it is likewise posi- 
tively injurious. 

If strata of stone of various sizes be placed as a 
road, it is well known to every skilful and observant 
road-maker, that the largest stones will constantly 
work up by the shaking and pressure of the traffic ; 
and that the only mode of keeping the stones of a road 
from motion is, to use materials of a uniform size 
from the bottom. In roads made upon large stones as 
a foundation, the perpetual motion, or change of po- 
sition of the materials, keeps open many apertures, 
through which the water passes. 

Roads placed upon a hard bottom, it has also been 
found, wear away more quickly than those which 
are placed upon a soft soil. This has been apparent 
upon roads where motives of economy or other causes 
have prevented the road being lifted to the bottom at 
once ; the wear has always been found to diminish, 
as soon as it was possible to remove the hard founda- 
tion. It is a known fact, that a road lasts much long- 
er over a morass, than when made over a rock. The 
.evidence produced before the committee of the House 



TREAtlSE ON ROADS. 143 

of Commons, showed the comparison on the road be- 
tween Bristol and Bridgwater, to be as five to seven 
in favor of the wearing on the morass, where the road 
is laid on the naked surface of the soil, against a part 
of the same road made over rocky ground. 

The common 2^ractice, on the formation of a new 
road, is, to dig a trench below the surface of the 
ground adjoining, and in this trench to deposite a 
quantity of large stones ; after this, a second quantity 
of stone, broken smaller, generally to about seven or 
eight pounds weight : these previous beds of stone are 
called the bottoming of the road, and are of various 
thickness, according to the caprice of the maker, and 
generally in proportion to the amount of money placed 
at his disposal. On some new roads, made in Scot- 
land in the summer of 1819, the thickness exceeded 
three feet. That which is properly called the road is 
there placed on the bottoming, by putting large quanti- 
ties of broken stone or gravel, generally a foot or eigh- 
teen inches thick, at once upon it. Were the materials 
of which the road itself is composed properly selected, 
prepared, and laid, some of the inconveniences of this 
system might be avoided ; but in the careless way in 
which this service is generally performed, the road is 
as open as a sieve, to receive the water, which pene- 
trating through the whole mass, is received and re- 
tained in the trench, whence the road is liable to give 
way in all changes of weather. 

A road formed on such principles, has never effect- 
ually answered the purpose which the road-maker 
should constantly have in view; namely, to make a 



144 APPENDIX. 

secure level flooring, over which carriages may pass 
with safety and equal expedition at all seasons of the 
year. 

The first operation in making a road should be 
the reverse of digging a trench. The road should 
not be sunk below, but rather raised above, the ordi- 
nary level of the adjacent ground ; care should be 
taken, at any rate, that there be a sufficient fall to take 
off the water, so that it should always be some inches 
below the level of the ground upon which the road is 
intended to be placed : this must be done, either by 
making drains to lower the ground ; or if that be not 
practicable, from the nature of the country, then the 
soil upon which the road is proposed to be laid must 
be raised by addition, so as to be some inches above 
the level of the water. 

Having secured the soil from urmer-water^ the 
road-maker is next to secure it from rain water, by a 
solid road made of clean dry stone or flint, so selected^ 
prepared, and laid, as to be perfectly impervious to 
water ; and this cannot be efiected unless the greatest 
care be taken that no earth, clay, chalk, or other mat- 
ter, that will hold or conduct water, be mixed with 
the broken stone ; which must be so prepared and 
laid, as to unite with its own angles into a firm, com- 
pact, impenetrable body. 

The thickness of such road is immaterial, as to its 
strength for carrying weight ; this object is already 
obtained by providing a dry surface, over which the 
road is to be placed as a covering or roof, to preserve 
it in that state ; experience having shown, that if wa- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 145 

ter passes through a road, and fills the native soil, the 
road, whatever majrbe its thickness, loses its support, 
and goes to pieces. In consequence of an alteration 
in the line of the turnpike road, near Rownham Fer- 
ry, in the parish of Ash ton, near Bristol, it has been 
necessary to remove the old road. This road was 
lifted and re-laid very skilfully in 1806; since which 
time, it has been in contemplation to change the line, 
and consequently it has been suffered to wear very 
thin. At present it is not above three inches thick in 
most places, and in none more than four; yet on re- 
moving the road, it was found that no water had pen- 
etrated, nor had the frost affected it during the winter 
preceding, and the natural earth beneath the road was 
found perfectly dry. 

Improvement of Roads, continues McAdam, " up- 
on the principle I have endeavored to explain, has 
been rapidly extended during the last four years. It 
has been carried into effect on various roads, and with 
every variety of material, in seventeen different coun- 
ties. These roads being so constructed as to exclude 
water, consequently none of them broke during the 
late severe winter, (1819—20); there was no inter- 
ruption to travelling, nor any additional expense by 
the post-office in conveying the mails over them, to 
the extent of upwards of one thousand miles of roadi 

On McAdciTn's theory the only practical road-ma- 
ker who has published his opinion is Paterson of 
Montrose. He says, (^Letters and Communicatioris., 
§*c. 1822), "These certainly ought to be considered 
as the grand first principles of road-making." He 
commends McAdam's reasoning on the principles; 
19 



146 APPENDIX. 

but objects, as we think with reason, to his drainage 
of three or four inches, as being insufficient. He adds, 
however, that though he considers McAdam's system 
as erroneous and defective in draining and preparing 
the road for the materials, yet, in regard to the mate- 
rials themselves, the method of preparing and putting 
them on, and keeping the road free from ruts by con- 
stant attention, has his entire approbation. These 
principles, however, he adds, "are 7iot neio ; but have 
been acted upon before. In regard to small breaking, 
he certainly has had the merit of carrying that mode 
to greater extent than any other individual that I have 
heard of; and the beneficial effects arising from it 
have consequently been more extensively seen and 
experienced." (^Letters on Road- Making, p. 49.) 

One of the most important and most obviously cor- 
rect of these principles, is that which requires a road 
to be made of such a degree of substance, as shall be 
in a due proportion to the weight and number of the 
carriages that are to travel over it. 

But although this is, in appearance, a self-evident 
proposition, in practice no rule is so universally vio- 
lated. 

Let the construction of any turnpike road, of one 
commonly considered as among the best, be properly 
examined ; that is, let measure be taken of the quan- 
tity of hard-road materials that compose the crust of 
the road over the subsoil, and it will almost universal- 
ly be found that it consists of only from three to five, 
or six inches in thickness. Whereas, instead of this 
weak and defective system of road-making, it may be 
laid down as a general rule, that on every main road 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 147 

where numerous heavy waggons and heavy loaded 
stage coaches are constantly travelling, the proper 
degree of strength which such a road ought to have 
cannot be obtained except by forming a regular foun- 
dation constructed with large stones, set as a rough 
pavement, with a coating of at least six inches of 
broken stone of the hardest kind laid upon it ; and 
further, that in all cases where the subsoil is elastic, 
it is necessary, before the foundation is laid on, that 
this elastic subsoil should be rendered non-elastic by 
every sort of contrivance ; such, amongst others, for 
instance, as perfect drainage, and laying a high em- 
bankment of earth upon the elastic soil, to compress it. 

The right understanding of this principle of road- 
making, which requires roads to be constructed with 
four or five times a greater body or depth of materials 
than is commonly given to them, is of such great im- 
portance, that it is requisite to illustrate and estabhsh 
the grounds on which it rests ; first, by reference to 
the laws of science concerning moving bodies, and 
secondly, by reference to experiments, which accu- 
rately prove the force of traction on difierent kinds of 
roads. 

As a carriage for conveying goods or passengers 
when put in action becomes a moving body, in the 
language of science, the question to be examined and 
decided is, how a carriage, when once propelled, can 
be kept moving onwards with the least possible quan- 
tity of labor to horses, or of force of traction? 

Sir Isaac Newton has laid it down as a general 
principle of science, that a body, when once set in 
motion, will continue to move uniformly forward in 



148 



APPENDIX. 



a Straight line by its momentum, until it be stopped by 
the action of some external force. This proposition 
is admitted and adopted by all natural philosophers as 
being perfectly true, and therefore, in order to apply 
it to roads, it is necessary to enquire what kinds of 
external force act in a manner to diminish and destroy 
the momentum of carriages passing over them. With 
respect to these external forces, the general doctrine 
is, that they consist of 1st, collision : 2d, friction ; 3d, 
gravity ; and 4th, air. 

1st, The effect of collision is very great in dimin- 
ishing the momentum of carriages ; it is occasioned 
by and is in proportion to the hard protuberances and 
other inequalities on the surface of a road. These 
occasion, by the resistance which they make to the 
wheels, jolts and shocks, which waste the power of 
draught, and considerably check the forward motion 
of a carriage. 

2d, Friction has a very great influence in checking 
the motion of a carriage ; for, when the wheels come 
into contact with a soft or elastic surface, the friction 
which takes place operates powerfully in obstructing 
the tendency of the carriage to proceed ; the motion 
forwards is immediately retarded and would soon 
cease if not renewed by the efforts of the horses. 
The " resistance," Professor Leslie says, " which fric- 
tion occasions, partakes of the nature of the resistance 
of fluids ; it consists of the consumption of the mov- 
ing force, or of the horses' labor, accasioned by the 
soft surface of the road, and the continually/ dej)ress- 
ing of the spongy and elastic sub-strata of the 
road." 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 149 

An ivory ball, set in motion with a certain velocity 
over a Turkey carpet, will suffer a visible relaxation 
of its course; but, with the same impelling force, it 
will advance further if rolled over a superfine cloth ; 
still further over smooth oaken planks ; and it will 
scarcely seem to abate its velocity over a sheet of 
pure ice. 

This short explanation of the nature and eiliects of 
collision and friction is sufficient to show, that smooth- 
ness and hardness are the chief qualities to be secur- 
ed in constructing a road. But perfect smoothness 
cannot be obtained without first securing perfect hard- 
ness, and therefore the business of making a good 
road may be said to resolve itself into that of securing 
perfect hardness. 

With the view of taking the right course for secur- 
ing this object, the first thing a road trustee or engi- 
neer should do, is to form a correct notion of what 
hardness is ; because the common habit of overlook- 
ing; this circumstance has been the source of _srreat 
error in forming opinions upon the qualities of differ- 
ent kinds of roads. 

Gravel roads, for instance, to which an appear- 
ance of smoothness is given by incurring a vast ex- 
pense in scraping them, and patching them with thin 
layers of very small gravel, are very commonly de- 
clared to be perfect, and unequalled by any other 
kind of road. But if the best gravel road be com- 
pared with one properly constructed with stone ma- 
terials, the hardness of the former will be found to 
be greatly inferior to that of the latter, and the error 



150 APPENDIX. 

of the advocates of smooth-looking gravel roads will 
be immediately made manifest. 

By referring to works of science, it will be seen 
that hardness is defined to be that property of a body 
by which it resists the impression of other bodies 
which impinge upon it ; and the degree of hardness 
is measured by the quantity of this resistance. If 
the resistance be so complete as to render it totally 
incapable of any impression, then a body is said to 
be perfectly hard. 

Now this hardness is the hardness which a road 
ought to have as far as it is practicable to produce it, 
and it is the chief business of a scientific road maker 
to do every thing necessary to produce it. For this 
purpose, when making a new road, he should first 
select or establish a substratum of soil or earth that 
is not spongy or elastic, for the bed of the road ; and 
then he should so dispose the materials of which the 
crust of the road is to consist, as to form a body suf- 
ficiently strong to oppose the greatest possible quan- 
ity of resistance to the weight of heavy carriages 
passing over it. 

That an elastic subsoil is unfit for a road is evi- 
dent from the nature of the resistance occasioned by 
friction, as above described by professor Leslie, and 
from the terms of the definition of hardness; for 
however strong the crust of materials may be which 
is formed over such a subsoil, it will not be capable 
of opposing a perfect resistance to a heavy moving 
body. The moving body will sink more or less in 
proportion as the subsoil is elastic, and the hardness 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 15 L 

of the road will be imperfect in proportion as this 
sinking takes place ; so that nothing can be more 
necessary, as a preliminary step in making a new 
road, than to take every possible precaution to avoid 
elastic subsoils, or to destroy the elasticity as much 
as possible, when no other can be found. 

After the engineer has prepared a proper substra- 
tum of earth for the bed of a road, he next must 
construct a crust of road materials in such a man- 
ner that, when consolidated, it shall possess such 
degree of hardness as will not admit the wheels of a 
carriages to cut or sink into it. For this purpose it 
will not be sufficient to lay upon the prepared bed of 
earth merely a coating of broken stones, for the car- 
riages passing over them will force these next the 
earth into it, and, at the same time press much 
of the earth upwards between the stones ; this will 
take place to a great degree in wet weather, when 
the bed of earth will be converted into soft mud by 
water passing from the surface of the road through 
the broken stones, into the bed of the road. In this 
way a considerable quantity of earth will be mixed 
with the stone materials laid on for forming the crust 
of the road, and this mixture will make it extremely 
imperfect as to hardness. It might be possible, in 
some measure, to cure this defect by laying on a suc- 
cession of coatings of broken stones ; but several of 
these will be necessary, and, after all, in long contin- 
ued wet weather, the mud will continue to be press- 
ed upwards from the bottom to the surface of the 
stones. If even a coating of from sixteen to twenty 
inches of stones be laid on, it will produce only a 



152 APPENDIX. 

palliative of the evil. So that this plan of making a 
road will be not only very imperfect, but at the same 
time very expensive. 

Mr. Telford's plan, which has completely succeed- 
ed on the Holyhead road, the Glasgow and Carlisle 
road, and several other roads in Scotland, of making 
a regular bottoming of rough, close-set pavement, is 
a plan that secures the greatest degree of hardness 
that can be given to a road ; it is also attended with 
much less expense than when a thick coating of 
broken stones is used ; for six inches of broken 
stones is sufficient when laid on a pavement, and the 
pavement may be made of any kind of common 
stone. 

By laying the stones in making the bottoming 
with their broadest face downwards, and filling up 
the interstices closely with stone chips well driven in, 
the earthy bed of the road cannot be pressed up so 
as to mix with the coating of broken stones. This 
coating, therefore, when consolidated will form a sol- 
id uniform mass of stone, and be infinitely harder 
than one of broken stones, when mixed with the 
earth of the substratum of the road. It is by pro- 
ceeding in the way here recommended that the fric- 
tion of wheels on a road will be reduced as much 
as possible. 

To comprehend thoroughly the great importance 
of making a regular and strong foundation for a road, 
it should be borne in mind, that roads are structures 
that have to sustain great weights, and violent per- 
cussion ; the same rules therefore ought to be follow- 
ed in regard to them as are followed in regard to oth- 
er structures. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 153 

In building edifices which are to support great 
weights, whether a church, a house, or a bridge, the 
primary and indispensible consideration of the arch- 
itect is to obtain a permanently firm and stable foun- 
dation ; well knowing that unless this be first sub- 
stantially made, no future dependence can be placed 
on the stability of the intended superstructure : but 
this most requisite precaution has but recently been 
attended to in the formation of roads, and only on 
those roads in Scotland, and between London and 
Holyhead, which have been under the direction of 
Mr. Telford. 

If the foundation of a road be not sufficient and 
equal to the pressure it has to sustain, the whole fab- 
ric, though in other respects ever so well constructed, 
must fail in permanent stability, and the hardness of 
it will be imperfect from its elasticity. 



DRAINAGE. 

In properly constructing this part of the business 
of road-making, great care is necessary. The ut- 
most judgment of the skilful surveyor will be called 
into action to enable him to make the best use of the 
natural facilities of the country, and to overcome the 
obstructions that he will sometimes meet with. In 
passing over flat land, open main drains, cut on the 
field side of the fences, must communicate with the 
natural watercourses of the country ; they should be 
three feet deep below the level of the bed of the road, 
one foot wide at bottom, and five feet wide at top. 
20 



154 APPENDIX. 

If springs rise in the site of the road, or in the slopes 
of deep cuttings, stone or tile drains should be made 
into them. In cutting, small drains technically call- 
ed mitre drains, should be formed ; the angle, depend- 
ing on the inclination of the road, should not exceed 
one inch in 100, They should be 9 inches wide at 
bottom, 12 inches at top, and 10 inches deep. Accor- 
ding to the inclinations of a road, and from the form 
and wetness of the country, cross drains of good ma- 
sonry should be built under the road, having their ex- 
tremities carried under the road fences. One of these 
should be built wherever water would lie ; and when 
the road passes along the slope of a hill, great num- 
bers are necessary to carry off the water that collects 
in the channel of the road on the side next the high 
ground. Various descriptions of drains are made in 
every situation where necessary, and the preserva- 
tion of the surface of the road secured by giving it a 
proper convexity in its cross section. 

The proper convex form is particularly essential 
on hills, in order that the water may have a tendency 
to fall from the centre to the sides. The side chan- 
nels, and all the road drains should be repaired at 
the approach and at the end of winter, and daily 
attention given to their being free from obstruction. 
If roads, by a proper system of drainage, be kept 
dry, they will be maintained in a good state, and at 
proportionally less expense. 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 155 



CUTTINGS. 



When it is necessary to make a deep cutting 
through a hill, the slopes of the banks should never 
be less, except in passing through stone, than two feet 
horizontal to one foot perpendicular ; for though sev- 
eral kinds of earth will stand at steeper inclinations, a 
slope of two to one is necessary for admitting the 
sun and wind to reach the road. The whole of the 
green sod and fertile soil on the surface of the land 
cut through, should be carefully collected and reser- 
ved, in order to be laid on the slopes immediately af- 
ter they are formed. If enough of these cannot be 
procured, the slopes should be strewed with mould, 
and sown with hay-seeds. When stones can be got, 
the slopes should be supported by a wall raised two 
or three feet high, at the bottom of them. These 
walls prevent the earth from falling from the slopes 
into the side chanels of the road, and add very much 
to the finished and workmanlike appearance of a 
road. It is sometimes advisable, particularly if an 
additional quantity of earth be wanted for an em- 
bankment, to make the slopes through the cuttings 
on the south side of a road of an inclination of three 
horizontal to one perpendicular, in order to secure 
the great advantage of allowing the sun and wind to 
reach more freely the surface of the road. In dis- 
tricts of country where stones abound, expense in 
moving earth and purchasing land may be avoided, 
by building retaining walls, and filling between them 
with earth. In rocky and rugged countries, this is 
generally the best way of obtaining the prescribed 



156 APPENDIX. 

inclinations. In forming a road along the face of a 
precipice, a wall must be built to support it. The 
difficulty of forming a road in such a place, is not so 
great as may be imagined, for the face of a precipice 
is seldom vertical, and if the inclination should be half 
a foot vertical to one foot horizontal, this will admit 
of a retaining wall being built. By building such a 
wall, say 30 feet high, and cutting 10 feet at that 
height into the rock, and filling up the space within 
the wall, a road of sufficient breadth will be obtained. 
In forming the bed for the road, material care should 
be taken, except where cutting into the surface is 
wholly unavoidable, in order to obtain the proper 
longitudinal inclinations, to elevate the bed with 
earth, two feet at least, above the natural surface of 
the adjoining ground : by following this course, the 
road will not be affected by water running under or 
soaking into it from the adjoining land. In arrang- 
ing the inclinations, they should be obtained by em- 
banking, where that is practicable, in preference to 
cutting. Almost all old roads across flat and wet 
land are sunk below the adjacent fields : this has ari- 
sen from the continued wearing of them, and carry- 
ing away the mud. 

No improvement is more generally wanting, than 
new forming these roads, so as] to raise their surfaces 
above the level of the adjoining land. This would 
greatly contribute to the hardness of them, to econo- 
my in keeping them in repair, and enabling horses to 
work with the advantage of having sufficient air for 
respiration. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 157 



EMBANKMENTS. 

Great care is necessary in making- high embank- 
ments. No person should be entrusted with these 
works who has not had considerable experience. 
The base should be formed, at first, to its full breadth ; 
the earth laid on in regular courses or layers, if 
not more than four feet in thickness, of a concave 
form, and no fresh course should be deposited 
until the preceeding one is firm and consolidated. 
The slopes at which cuttings and embankments can 
be safely made entirely depend on the nature of the 
soil. In the London and plastic clay formations, it 
will not be safe to make the slopes of embankments 
or cuttings, that exceed 4 feet high, with a steeper 
slope than three to one. In chalk or marl, the slopes 
will stand 1 to 1. In solid sandstone, at | to 1, or 
nearly vertical. Before quitting this subject, it is 
proper to remark, that in every instance of deep cut- 
tins:, the greatest pains should be bestowed in exam- 
ining the character of the material to be removed : 
much difficulty will be avoided by proceeding in this 
way ; but on the whole, the best general rule to fol- 
low, is always to lay out a line of road, so as to 
avoid, as much as possible, deep cuttings and high 
embankments ; they are always attended with great 
expense, and are unavoidably liable to many objec- 
tions." — Sir H. Farnell. 



158 APPENDIX. 

MATERIALS, ETC. 

The breadth of roads should vary according to cir- 
cumstances. In the vicinity of large towns, where the 
traffic is considerable, the road should, in our opin- 
ion, be not less than sixty feet between the fences. , 
Where there is less traffic, fifty feet will be sufficient. 
The whole breadth should, in these cases be metalled^ 
or laid with broken stones. Near London, and 
other large towns and cities, perhaps 70 feet is 
not too great a width, and a footpath should be provi- 
ded on each side. " The road," says Mr. Telford, 
in a specification for the Holyhead road, " is to be 
30 feet wide, exclusive of footpaths, with a fall of 
6 inches from the centre to the side channels." The 
bed of the new road being prepared for the reception 
of the materials, should, if of a wet or spongy nature, 
be well ' rammed'' with chips of stone ; In some situ- 
ations it is advisable to lay a stratum of hand-laid 
stones, of from 5 to 7 inches in depth, with their 
broadest ends placed downwards, and the whole 
built compactly together. On this is to be laid the 
' TYietal^ or broken stones, to the depth of at least 8 
inches, broken of a uniform size, so as to form a sol- 
id and compact body. To insure uniformity in the 
size of the broken stones, various tests have been 
suggested ; perhaps the most simple is, that every 
piece shall pass through a ring of 21 inches in diame- 
ter. On this body of metal, no binding or gravel 
should be used ; the angular sides of the metal soon 
lock into each other, and form a smooth surface. 
In the selection of road-metal, we prefer the several 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 159 

varieties of green-stone. The best kinds of these 
are less friable than granite, when broken into small 
pieces. It is, however, often necessary, for want of 
better materials, to use sandstone, common limestone, 
and chalk, even in districts where there is a great 
deal of traffic ; in some instances, where coal is abun- 
dant, sandstone is reduced to a vitreous mass in 
kilns erected by the road side ; but all such road-met- 
al is now used very sparingly in the formation of 
modern roads, and confined chiefly to the bridle 
tracks. 

" Well-made roads, formed of clean, hard, broken 
stone," observes Mr. Macneill, "placed on a solid 
foundation, are very little affected by changes of at- 
mosphere ; weak roads, or those that are imperfectly 
formed with gravel, flint or round pebbles, without 
bottoming, or foundation of stone pavement or con- 
crete, are, on the contrary, much affected by changes 
of the weather. In the formation of such roads, and 
before they become bound or firm, a considerable por- 
tion of the sub-soil mixes with the stone or gravely 
in consequence of the necessity of putting the gravel 
on in thin layers : this mixture of earth or clay, in 
dry, warm seasons, expands by the heat, and makes 
the road loose and open ; the consequence is, that 
the stones are thrown out, and many of them are 
crushed and ground into dust, producing considera- 
ble wear and diminution of the materials. In wet 
weather, also, the clay or earth mixed with the stones 
absOrbes moisture, becomes soft, and allows the stones^ 
to move and rub against each other, when acted upoB 



160 APPENDIX. 

by the feet of horses or wheels of carriages. This at- 
trition of the stones against each other wears them 
out surprisingly fast, and produces large quantities 
of mud, which tend to keep the road damp, and by 
that means increase the injury." 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 161 



ROADS ABOUT ALBANY. 

The principal roads about Albany are from the 
east, the north and west. The river snpphes all the 
wants of commerce from the south. The road to 
Troy, though not strictly constructed on the McAdam 
principle h as proved of great benefit to the city. The 
travelling has increased beyond all calculation, and 
thousands visit us, who were deterred from doing so 
by the badness of the old road, during many months 
in the year. The roads from the east by the way of 
Bath and Greenbush are turnpikes, and have all the 
faults and inconveniencies of our common roads. 
Though not profitable to their proprietors, they are 
beneficial to the public. Their sphere of attraction is 
however limited. It is said that the business of the 
country west of Brainard's bridge is principally trans- 
acted elsewhere than in this city. On the other, 
Sandlake is probably the boundary of the circle in 
that direction. The old Schenectady turnpike, though 
its usefulness is lessened by the construction of the 
Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road, has been of great 
service to this city, and is an honorable memorial of 
its early enterprize. The roads towards Cherry Val- 
ley and to the south-western villages of this county, 
are important avenues, but it is said their condi- 
tion for a great part of the year is such as to direct 
much of our former business to places lower down 
on the west bank of the river. Upon personal inqui- 
ry I am told that the travelling on the Albany and 
21 



162 APPENDIX. 

Delaware turnpike has latterly fallen off, and that 
much of the traffic once connected with it has also 
been diverted to places below this city. The Mo- 
hawk and Hudson Rail Road, though it has been un- 
fortunate in many particulars, is still of the utmost 
importance to our city, and any opposition which tends 
to impair its utility, must be considered as highly dis- 
advantageous to the interests of this community. 
Without presuming to meddle with its concerns, we 
cannot disguise the opinion, that a new stem brought 
into the city, as by competent engineers it is confident- 
ly asserted may be done, which shall enable the com- 
pany to dispense with the animal power they are now 
obliged to use in addition to that of steam, is the chief 
remedy which is to be applied to the evils under 
which it languishes. 

One of the most important routes which has been 
projected in reference to our city, is that which is to 
form the western termination of the Railway from 
Boston via Worcester to the state line. To the line, 
it is now actually in process of construction, and it re- 
mains to be seen, whether we will permit either the 
city of Troy or Hudson to step in and carry off the 
eastern trade from us or not. An existing company 
has been unable to obtain suflicient funds to construct 
the western part of the line, and sometime ago solicit- 
ed a subscription from the corporation of the city in 
aid of its funds. Various circumstances and the pe- 
culiar embarrassments of the times have as yet ren- 
dered any other step inadmissible than a preliminary 
survey, and the necessary negociations for the land 
over which it is to pass. Reports have been made, 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 1G3 

meetings held, and calculations published in relation 
to this work. As long ago as 1829, a gentleman of 
Boston, Mr. William Jackson, made an appeal to the 
mechanics of that city in behalf of this enterprise in 
the shape of a lecture, which deservedly went through 
two large editions. He assumed the ground, that a 
railway with double tracks between Boston and Alba- 
ny, would be like the making of another Hudson riv- 
er, and the creation of a trade "of great value to Bos- 
ton, but still greater to Albany." 

Two hundred and eighty thousand barrels of flour 
are annually consumed in Boston. The saving to 
that city, in the prices asked for this article at seasons 
when the supply is cut off by the closing of the navi- 
gation, or any accidental interruption, he asserts 
would in a short time pay for the construction of the 
road. The eastern trade of Vermont, in his opinion, 
would follow this, in preference to its present over- 
land route. He also estimated that the rise on the 
real estate of Boston alone would equal three millions 
of dollars. The number of passengers in that year, 
between Boston and Albany was 23,000, which ac- 
cording to experience, would be increased three fold, 
if not four fold in number. The scope of his argu- 
ment in a political and moral point of view, was still 
more striking. 

The recent calculations of intelligent persons in 
this city, demonstrate its utility in a striking manner, 
and to these we would refer all who wish to under- 
stand the subject. Would any Albanian hesitate in 
his support of a project of a second Hudson river, could 
such a stream have its termination at Boston, and its 



164' APPENDIX. 

sources here ? It is to be presumed not ; yet such iu 
effect will be the effect of the Rail Road to that 
city. In fact, the two towns would rapidly approxi- 
mate in population and resources. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 165 



IMPROVEMENT OF ROADS. 



BETON. 

Immense sums have been expended in France ; 
and by the tenor of an article in Le Courier des 
Etats Ufiis, of February 26, 1 discover that these en- 
terprises are pursued with increasing energy, but, by 
other concurrent sources, of information, we discover 
that they are by no means confined to France ; Bel- 
gium, Germany, the Swiss Cantons, Austria, and Rus- 
sia, all partake, more or less, of this renewed spirit of 
enterprise. Austria, indeed, has the honor to have 
constructed the first railroad of any conseG]uence on 
continental Europe. This road extends about 150 
English miles from Budweiss, in Bohemia, through 
the mountains of Bohemia Wald, to Lintz, in Upper 
Austria, and on the Danube. Another great line of 
railroad has been also designed in Austria, which is 
to extend about j^^e hundred miles, from Yienna, over 
Northern Hungary, to Brody, on the northeastern 
border of Austrian Poland. Application has again 
been made to the Emperor of Russia, and favorably 
received, to construct another railroad of near four 
hundred miles, from Brody to Odessa, on the Black 
Sea. 

The very conception of such improvements would 
not have been dared even thirty years ago ; they are, 
in their conception alone, independent of even the for- 
mation of plans for completion, proof of a most aston- 



166 APPENDIX. 

ishing- change in the mmds of mankind on continen- 
tal Europe as to the rational appUcation of their ener- 
gies and means. A few years past a railroad was 
projected of about four or five miles in length, in 
Germany, between Nuremberg and Furth, and in the 
French paper alluded to we have the following : 

« They inform us from Nuremberg that the railroad 
(le chemin de fer) called the Louis has been comple- 
ted about three years. Since the 7th of December, 
1835, there have passed 1,3.57,285 on this road be- 
tween Furth and Nuremberg, and the receipts have 
amounted to 177,443 florins, (^71,000.) And two cir- 
cumstances deserving the most particular mention are, 
that, during three years' use the rails have not receiv- 
ed appreciable damage, nor has a single accident put 
human life in danger." 

The Austrian and Bavarian roads many may re- 
gard as small beginnings, but they are successful in 
their operations, and, therefore, morally speaking, 
they are extremely important examples in the heart 
of highly civilized communities, and have excited to 
similar enter prize on a much more extensive scale. 
The northern part of Italy, or that part occupied by 
the Po and its confluents, is in an eminent degree fa- 
vorable to the construction of railroads, and from the 
source already drawn on we have the following : 

'' The Constitution (statuis) of the Milan and Ye- 
nice Railroad have been approved by the Austrian 
Government, and the work is to be commenced in the 
ensuing spring, (1839.) It is certain that the com- 
merce between Milan and Genoa will be diverted into 
the new channel from Venice ; which latter city be- 



TREATISE ON KOADS. 167 

ing a free port, colonial articles can be obtained there 
on better terms than at Genoa. The cars, it is sup- 
posed, will occupy about eight hours between Milan 
and Yenice ; price of passage for persons, one franc, 
18| cents." 

The distance from Genoa to Milan is about eighty 
Eno-lish miles, and from Milan to Venice one hundred 
and sixty. 

My reasons for requesting a place in the National 
Intelligencer are partly stated, but I was also induced 
by the following. The original, I may observe, is 
preceded by several very forcible observations on the 
great advantages to be derived from the propulsion by 
steam of carriages on common roads ; and I may also 
premise that the substance called Beton is in fact an 
an artificial pudding stone or amygdaloid.* 

"Of all the enterprises formed to obtain this result, 
{moving carriages on coimnon roads,) there is one 
which appears to demand public attention in tlie 
highest degree ; that is, Beton roads. Such roads ap- 
pear to us destined to resolve that great question in 
social economy which is now, above all others, of 



* Professor D. H. Malian, of the Military Academy, New-York, 
in his excellent Treatise on Civil Engineering, gives at page 24 the 
following components to form Beton: 

Hydraulic lime, unslaked 0,30 

Sand, middling 0,30 

Cement, common clay 0,30 

Gravel, course 0,20 

Chippings of stone 0,40 

This compound would be a true artificial pudding stone, and, no 
doubt, would admit of other components and proportions, and calls 
for extended experiments on both its composition and uses. 



168 APPENDIX. 

paramount interest, that is, to construct, at moderate 
expense, routes admitting facile transport, by steam 
power. 

" A company for the construction ot roads in Beton 
has recently been formed at Paris, under the direction 
of the honorable M. Garcias, member of the Chamber 
of Deputies, from the Eastern Pyrenees. 

" The roads which this company proposes to con- 
struct are to be formed by two different modes of pro- 
ceeding: 

" 1st. On land purchased from individuals. 

'<2d. Along the sides of roads already formed. 

"In the first mode, the expense, liberally estimated, 
would be 170,000 francs per league, about $12,000 
per English mile; whilst the second mode will not 
demand an expenditure exceeding 80,000 francs 
(|15,000) per league, (5,550 the English mile.) The 
speed, based upon numerous experiments, is calcula- 
ted at a mean of six leagues per hour, about 16 Eng- 
lish miles." 

In the United States the difference of expense be- 
tween the two modes would probably be kss than in 
France. The article goes on as follows : 

" These roads are to be composed of a zone of Beton 
from 15 to 20 tenths of a metre (| to f of a foot Eng- 
lish) in thickness, equally spread over a surface of 2 J 
metres, (8 2-lOth English feet) in width, and without 
track or jutting. 

" The construction of these roads demands none of 
the expensive and lengthened studies requisite for con- 
structing railroads. It has been established, experi- 
mentally, that the Beton, shortly after being placed, 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 169 

can support the heaviest carriages without breach or 
depression ; and that, in less than one year, several 
lines of road may be brought into full use, and this 
advantage is already felt in all its force. The admin- 
istrative expense, as also that of repairing, is insig- 
nificant when compared with railroads. Again : the 
Beton roads, to the advantages of celerity, economy of 
construction, and price of transport^ add all the other 
conditions required at present with so much ardor." 

Changing the names of places, the latter part of the 
preceding quotation would apply to the United States 
with a force augmented in intensity in proportion to 
the immense difference in extent of territory compa- 
red to that of France. 

It may be remarked as amongst the most extraor- 
dinary facts in history, that roads have been amongst 
the most neglected of all those improvements necessa- 
ry to the inter-communication of mankind. It has 
not yet been a century since any considerable atten- 
tion was paid to roads, even in the most densely inhab- 
ited sections of Europe. Another circumstance con- 
nected with this vital subject may be noticed : that is, 
the fact that the three monarchs of modern Europe 
most eminent for military talent and success in war, 
Peter I. of Russia, Frederick II. of Prussia, and Napo- 
leon, were all still more eminent for their attention to 
internal improvements. The canal connexion be- 
tween the Baltic and Wolga has contributed to swell 
the fame of Peter ; the connexions between the Elbe, 
Oder, and Vistula have done like service to the name 
of Frederick, whilst the fame of Napoleon is drawn in 
lines ineffaceable over the Alps. Were it not for the 
22 



170 APPENDIX. 

canals of New- York, the name of De Witt Clinton 
might fade away with those of others whose fame 
rests on mere pohtical works. But the man who con- 
tributed most to form a water communication be- 
tween the Atlantic tides and the inland sea of Erie 
can only be forgotten in the grave of History itself. — 
Nat Intelligencer. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 171 



TRAVELLING AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. 

The following brief summary of a recent journey 
from New- York to New-Orleans, contrasted with one 
made in 1800, will perhaps be interesting, and serve 
to illustrate the modern improvement in travelling. 

IN 1800. 

"April 3d. Left New- York in ferry boat for Jersey 
city. Took two-horse coach and got to Philadelphia 
the fourth day at 4 P. M. Left Philadelphia next 
morning in a one-horse chaise, with the mail bag be- 
hind, for Lancaster, where we arrived the third day. 
At Lancaster bought a horse, and after a nine days' 
journey through the forests, reached Pittsburg. Here, 
with some others, 1 bought for eighteen dollars, a flat 
boat, in which we took our departure for New-Or- 
leans, floating with the current. After divers adven- 
tures and escapes from great peril by land and water, 
we reached Natchez in fifty-seven days after leaving 
Pittsburg, and New-Orleans city in thirteen days 
thereafter, having been from New- York on the jour- 
ney eighty-four days, which our friends in New-Or- 
leans 4id say was an expeditious voyage. My own 
personal cost on the way was, in sum total, £27 lis. 
4id." ^ 

IN 1839. 

Left New- York Monday, January gist, at 6 A. M. 
in railroad cars at Jersey city. Arrived at Philadel- 



172 APPENDIX. 

phia at ten minutes past 12. Time, 6 hours and 10 
minutes. — Cost, ,^4. 

At 2 left Philadelphia in cars for Baltimore. Arri- 
ved at 8 P. M. Time, 6 hours.— Cost, $4. 

Left Baltimore next afternoon, at 4, in mail chariot 
for Wheeling. Arrived at Wheeling 5 minutes be- 
fore 12 Saturday noon. Time 43 hours and 50 min- 
utes.— Cost, $23. 

Left Wheeling next morning, in accommodation 
stage for Cincinnati. Arrived at Cincinnati in 59 
hours and 30 minutes. Cost, $24.50. 

Left Cincinnati at 10 next morning, in the mail 
boat Pike, and at 10 at night reached Louisville. 
Time, 12 hours.— Cost, $4. 

Left Louisville next morning at 11, in steamer Di- 
ana, and reached Natchez the sixth day. Time, 149 
hours.— Cost, $35. 

Left Natchez same day, and reached New-Orleans 
the next evening. Time, 30 hours. — Cost, $10. 

Incidental expenses at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cin- 
cinnati, and Louisville, $10. 

Total 306 hours 30 minutes.— Cost, $114.50. 

Thus making 12 days, 18 hours, and 30 minutes, 
the time of travel between New- York and New-Or- 
leans. Difference between 1839 and 1800, in time, 
about 71 days. Difference in expense, about $25 in 
favor of 1839. 

N. B. This last journey was made in the winter 
season. In the summer months it can be performed 
for $80, and in less time. The above includes every 
item, both of expense, "feed and fare." — Natchez 
Courier. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 173 

CANALS OF ENGLAND. 

The following calculations will show the immense 
wealth created in England by the spirit of association 
and of enterprise, which is developed with so much 
difficulty amongst other nations. It presents a com- 
parison between the first cost of shares in each re- 
spective canal, and of the profit realized on stock, ac- 
cording to the actual returns : 

First cost. Value of stock. 

Canal of Coventry - ster'g £100 £750 

'• of Mersey - - 100 720 

" ofConford - - 100 410 

" of Leeds and Liverpool 100 470 

" of Monmouthshire - 100 195 

" of Trent and Mersey, 

one-quarter of part 50 650 

" of Longborough - 142 2,200 

" of Clamorganshire 172 290 

« ofWarwick& Hampton 100 215 

" of Stroudwater ^ 150 500 

'^ of Shrewsbury - 125 250 

" of Birmingham - 17 240 

" of Stafford & Worcester 140 550 

The capital employed in the prosecution of these 
canals increased, as their utility and the benefits to be 
derived from them were made known, to the surpri- 
sing point at which they are at the present day, being 
a quintuple 'profit. One hundred pounds sterling 
invested in such stock yields to its proprietor an inte- 
rest of more than five times that amount, and a reve- 
nue in proportion. 



174 



APPENDIX. 















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TREATISE OIV llO^^DS. 175 



LAWS OF NEW-YORK. 



HIGHWAYS AND BRIDGES. 

Art. I. — Of the officers entrusted with the care and 
superintendence of Inghways and bridges; and 
their general jiowers and duties. 

Section. 1. The commissioners of highways in 
the several towns in this state, shall have the care and 
superintendence of the highways and bridges therein ; 
and it shall be their duty, 

1 . To give directions for the repairing of the roads 
and bridges, within their respective towns : 

2. To regulate the roads already laid out, and to 
alter such of them as they^ or a majority of them, 
shall deem inconvenient r 

3. To cause such of the roads used as highways, 
as shall have been laid out but not sufficiently descri- 
bed, and such as shall have been used for twenty years 
but not recorded, to be ascertained, described and en- 
tered of record in the town clerk's office : 

4. To cause the highways, and the bridges which 
are or may be erected over streams intersecting high- 
ways, to be kept in repair : 

5. To divide their respective towns into so many 
road districts as they shall judge convenient, by wri- 
ting under their hands, to be lodged with the town 



176 APPENDIX. 

clerk, and by him to be entered in the town book : 
such divisions to be made annually, if they shall think 
it necessary, and in all cases to be made ten days be- 
fore the annual town meeting : 

6. To assign to each of the said road districts, such 
of the inhabitants liable to work on highways, as they 
shall think proper, having regard to proximity of res- 
idence as much as may be : and, 

7. To require the overseers of highways, from time 
to time and as often as they shall deem necessary, to 
warn all persons assessed to work on highways, to 
come and work thereon, with such implements, carri- 
ages, catde or sleds as the said commissioners or any 
one of them, shall direct. 

§ 2. The commissioners of highways shall have 
power, in the manner, and under the the restrictions 
hereinafter provided, to lay out on actual survey, such 
new roads in their respective towns as they may deem 
necessary and proper ; and to discontinue such old 
roads and highways, as shall appear to them, on the 
oaths of twelve freeholders of the same town, to have 
become unnecessary. 

§ 3. The commissioners of highways of each town, 
shall render to the board of town auditors at their an- 
nual meeting for auditing the accounts of town offi- 
cers, an account in writing, stating, 

1. The labor assessed and performed in such town : 

2. The sums received by such commissioners for 
fines and conimutations,and all other moneys received 
under this Chapter : 

3. The improvements which have been made on 
the roads and bridges in their town, during the year 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 17*7 

immediately preceding such report, and an account of 
the state of such roads and bridges : and, 

4. A statement of the improvements necessary to 
be made on such roads and bridges, and an estimate 
of the probable expense of making such improve- 
ments, beyond what the labor to be assessed in that 
year, will accomplish. 

§ 4. The commissioners of highways of each town 
shall deliver to the supervisor of such town, a state- 
ment of the improvements necessary to be made on 
the roads and bridges, together with the probable ex- 
pense thereof; which supervisor shall lay the same 
before the board of supervisors at their next meeting. 
The board of supervisors shall cause the amount so 
estimated, to be assessed, levied and collected, in such 
town, in the same manner as other town charges ; but 
the monies to be raised in any such town, shall not 
exceed in any one year, the sum of two hunderd and 
fifty dollars. 

§ 5. It shall be the duty of the commissioners of 
highways of each town, to cause mile-boards or stones, 
to be erected, where not already erected, on the post 
roads, and siich other public roads in their town, as 
they may think proper, at the distance of one mile 
from each other, with such fair and legible inscrip- 
tions as they may think proper. 

§ 6. It shall be the duty of the overseers of high- 
ways in each town, 

1. To repair and keep in order the highways with-^ 
in the several districts for which they shall have been 
elected : 

2. When so required by the commissioners of high- 

23 



178 APPENDIX. 

ways, or any one of theiHj to warn all persons assessed 
to work on the highways in their respective districts, 
to come and work thereon : 

3. To cause the noxious weeds on each side of the 
highway within their respective districts, to be cut 
down or destroyed twice in each year, once before the 
first day of July, and again before the first day of 
September ; and the requisite labor shall be consider- 
ed highway work : and, 

4. To collect all fines and commutation money, 
and to execute all lawful orders of the commissioners. 

§ 7. It shall be the further duty of the overseers of 
highways, once in every month, from the first day of 
April until the first day of December, to cause all the 
loose stones lying on the beaten track of every road 
within their respective districts, to be removed ; and 
to cause the monuments erected or to be erected, as the 
boundaries of highways, to be kept up and renewed, 
so that the extent of such roads may be publicly 
known. 

§ 8. When the quantity of labor assessed on the in- 
habitants of any road district by the commissioners, 
shall be deemed insufiicient by the overseer of such 
district to keep the roads therein in repair, it shall be 
the further duty of such overseer, to make another as- 
sessment on the actual residents in such district, in 
the same proportion, as near as may be, and not ex- 
ceeding one third of the number of days assessed in 
the same year by the commissioners on the inhabi- 
tants of such district ; and the labor so assessed by an 
overseer, shall be performed or commuted for, in like 
manner as if the same had been assessed by the com- 
missioners of highways. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 179 

§ 9. The commissioners of highways of each town, 
shall cause guide-posts, with proper inscriptions and 
devices, to be erected at the intersections of all the 
post-roads in their town, and at the intersectioii of 
such other roads therein as they may deem necessary. 

§ 10. It shall be the duty of the overseers ot high- 
ways of each town to maintain and keep in repair, at 
the expense of the town, such guide-posts as may have 
been erected by order of the commissioners, within 
the limits of the districts for which they shall hav0 
been respectively elected or appointed, 

§ 11. The commissioners of highways, whenever 
they shall think it necessary or useful, may direct and 
empower any overseer of highways, in their respect- 
ive towns, to procure a good and sufficient iron or 
steel-shod scraper, and plough, or either of them, for 
the use of his load district ; to be paid for, by the mo^ 
neys arising from commutations and fines within sucli 
district. 

§ 12. In case such moneys shall be insufficient for 
the purpose, the deficiency shall be assessed by the 
overseers upon the inhabitants of the districts, in the 
proportion they are respectively assessed on the as- 
sessment roll of said town ; and if any one so assess- 
ed, shall neglect or refuse to pay such assessment, the 
same may be sued for and recovered by the overseer. 

§ 13. If any overseer shall be employed more days 
in executing the several duties enjoined on him by 
this Chapter, than he is assessed to work on the high- 
way, he shall be paid for the excess at the rate of sev- 
enty-five cents per day, and be allowed to retain the 
Bame out of the moneys which may come into his 



180 APPENDIX. 

hands for fines under this Chapter ; but he shall not 
be permitted to commute for the days he is assessed. 

§ 14. If any person chosen to the office of overseer 
of highways, shall refuse to serve, or if his office shall 
become vacant, the commissioners of highways of the 
town, shall, by warrant under their hands, appoint 
some other person in his stead ; and the overseer so 
appointed, shall have the same powers, be subject to 
the same orders, and liable to the same penalties, as 
overseers chosen in town meetings. 

§ 15. The commissioners making the appointment, 
shall cause such warrant to be forthwith filed in the 
office of the town clerk, who shall give notice to the 
person appointed as in other cases. 

§ 16. Every overseer of highways who shall refuse 
or neglect either, 

1. To warn the people assessed to work on the 
highways, when he shall have been required so to 
do, by the commissioners, or either of them : 

2. To collect the moneys that may arise from fines 
or commutations : or, 

3. To perform any of the duties required by this 
chapter, or which may be enjoined on him by the 
commissioners of highways of his town, and for the 
omission of which, a penalty is not hereinafter pro- 
vided : 

Shall, for every such refusal or neglect, forfeit the 
sum of ten dollars, to be sued for by the commission- 
ers of highways of the town ; and when recovered to 
be applied by them in making and improving the 
roads and bridges therein. 

§ 17. It shall be the duty of the commissioners of 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 181 

highways of each town, whenever any person resir 
dent in their town shall make complaint that any 
overseer of highways in such town has refused or ne- 
glected to perform any of the duties enumerated in 
the last preceding section, and shall give or offer to 
such commissioners, sufficient security to indemnify 
them against the costs which may be incurred in pro- 
secuting for the penalty annexed to such refusal or 
neglect, forthwith to prosecute such overseer for the 
offence complained of. 

§ 18. If such commissioners of highways shall rer 
fuse or neglect to prosecute for such penalty, they shall 
in every such case, forfeit the sum of ten dollars, to 
be recovered by the person who shall have made such 
complaint, and given or offered such security. 

Art. II. — Of the persons liable to work on high^ 
waySy and the making of assessments therefor. 

§ 19, Every person owning or occupying land in 
the town in which he or she resides, and every male 
inhabitant above the age of twenty-one years residing 
in the town, when the assessment is made, shall be 
assessed to work on the public highways in such 
town ; and the lands of non-residents, situated in such 
town, shall be assessed for highway labor, as herein- 
after directed. 

§ 20. The commissioners of highways of each town 
shall meet within eighteen days after they shall be 
chosen, at the place of town meeting, on such day as 
they shall agree upon, and afterwards at such other 
times and places as they shall think proper. 

§ 21. Each of the overseers of highways shall de- 



182 APPENDIX. 

liver to the clerk of the town, within sixteen days af- 
ter his election or appointment, a list subscribed by 
such overseer, of the names of all the inhabitants in 
his road district, who are liable to work on the high- 
ways. 

§ 22. The commissioners of highways in each 
town, at their first or any subsequent meeting, shall 
make out a list and statement of the contents of all 
lots, pieces or parcels of land within such town, own- 
ed by non-residents therein, every lot so designated 
shall be described in the same manner as is required 
from assessors, and its value shall be set down oppo- 
site to such description, such value shall be the same 
as was affixed to such lot in the last assessment roll 
of the town ; and if such lot was not separately valu- 
ed in such roll^ then in proportion to the valuation 
which shall have been affixed to the whole tract of 
which such lot shall be a part. 

§ 23. The town clerk shall deliver the lists filed by 
the overseers, to the commissioners of highways of 
the town ; who sball proceed, at their next meeting, 
,or at some subsequent meeting, to ascertain, estimate 
and assess the highway labor to be performed in their 
town, the then ensuing year. 

§ 24. In making such estimate and assessment the 
^commissioners shall proceed as follows : 

1. The whole number of days' work to be assessed 
in each year shall be ascertained, and shall be at least 
three times the number of taxable inhabitants in such 
ifcown. 

2. Every male inhabitant being above the age of 
twenty -one years, (excepting ministers of the gospel 



ITREATISE ON ROADS, 183 

and priests of every denomination, patipers, and idiots 
and lunatics,) shall be assessed at least one day. 

3. The residue of such day's work shall be appor- 
tioned upon the estate, real and personal, of every in- 
habitant of such town, as the same shall appear by 
the last assessment roll of the said town, and upon 
each tract or parcel of land, of which the owners are 
non-residents, contained in the list made as aforesaid : 

4. If, after such apportionment, there shall be any 
deficiency in the number of days' work determined- 
by the commissioners to be performed in their town, 
the then ensuing year, such deficiency shall be assess- 
ed upon the estates, real and personal, of the inhabit- 
ants of the town, and upon each tractor parcel of 
land of which the owners are non-residents, according 
tathe last assessment roll : 

5. The commissioners shall afiix to the name of 
each person named in the list furnished by the over- 
seers, and also to the description of each tract or par- 
cel of land contained in the list prepared by them of 
non-resident lands, the number of days which such 
person or tract shall be assessed for highway labor, a& 
herein directed, and the commissioners shall subscribe 
such lists and file them with the town clerk. 

§25. Lands of non-residents within any town, oc- 
cupied and improved by the owner or owners, or his 
or their servants or agents, shall be liable to the same 
assessments for highways as if the owner or owners^ 
were residents. 

§ 26. The real property of non-resident owners, im- 
proved or occupied by a servant or agent, shall be 
subject to assessment of highway labor, and at the 
same rate as the real property of resident owners. 



184 APPENDIX. 

§ 27. The commissioners shall direct the clerk of 
the town to make a copy of each list, and shall sub- 
scribe such copies ; after which, they shall cause the 
several copies to be delivered to the respective over- 
seers of highways of the several districts in which the 
highway labor is assessed. 

§ 28. The names of persons left out of any such list, 
and of new inhabitants, shall from time to time be 
added to the several lists, and they shall be rated, by 
the overseers in proportion to their real and personal 
estate, to work on the highways, as others rated by 
the commissioners on such lists, subject to an appeal 
to the commissioners. 

§ 29, Whenever any non-resident owner shall con- 
ceive himself aggrieved by the assessments of any 
commissioners of highways, in carrying into effect the 
provisions of this Article, it shall be lawful for such 
owner, or his agentj within thirty days after such as- 
sessment, to appeal to any three judges of the court of 
common pleas of the county in which such land is 
situated. 

§ 30. It shall be the duty of such judges within 
twenty days thereafter, to convene and decide on such 
appeal, the said owner or agent giving notice to the 
commissioners of the time of the meeting of the 
judges ; and their decision, or that of any two of them, 
shall be final and Conclusive in the premises. Each 
judge shall be entitled to receive for his services on 
such appeal, two dollars for each day he may be em- 
ployed thereon, to be paid by the party appealing, if 
the proceedings of the commissioners and overseers 
shall be affirmed ; but if reversed or modified favora- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 185 

ble to the party appealing, to be levied and paid as 
part of the contingent expenses of such town. 

§ 31. It shall be the duty of the commissioners of 
highways of each town, to credit such persons as live 
on private roads, and work the same, so much on ac- 
count of their assessments, as such commissioners 
may deem necessary to work such private road ; or to 
annex such private roads to some of the highway 
districts. 

§ 32. Whenever the commissioners of highways 
shall assess the occupant, for any land not owned by 
such occupant, they shall distinguish in their assess- 
ment listSj the amount charged upon such land, from 
the personal taX) if any, of the occupant thereof. 
But when any such land shall be assessed in the name 
of the occupant, the owner thereof shtill not be assess- 
ed during the same year to work on the highways on 
account of the same land. 

§ 33. Whenever any tenant of any land for a less 
term than twenty-five years, shall be assessed to work 
on the highways, for such land, pursuant to the last 
preceding section, and shall actually perform such 
work, or commute therefor, he shall be entitled to a 
deduction from the rent due, or to become due from 
him, for such land, equal to the full amount of such 
assessment, estimating the same at the rate of sixty- 
two and a half cents per day ; unless otherwise pro- 
vided for by covenant or agreement, between such 
tenant and his landlord. 



24 



186 APPENDIX. 

Art. III. — Of the duties of overseers in regard to 
the performance of labor iqjon highways ; and 
for the performance of such labor or the commu- 
tation therefor. 

§ 34. It shall be the duty of the overseers of high- 
ways, to give at least twenty-four hours' notice to all 
persons assessed to work on the highways, and resi- 
ding within the limits of their respective districts, of 
the time and place, when and where they are to ap- 
pear for that purpose, and with what implements; 
but no person being a resident of the town, shall be 
required to work on any highway, other than in the 
district in which he resides, unless he shall elect to 
work in some district where he has any land ; and 
in such case he may, with the approbation of the 
commissioners of highways, apply the work assessed 
in respect to such land, in the district where the 
same is situated. 

§ 35. It shall be the duty of the several overseers of 
highways, to notify the agent of every non-resident 
landholder, whose lands are assessed, (if such agent 
reside in the town where such assessment is made) 
of the number of days such non-resident is assessed, 
and of the time when, and the place where the labor 
is to be performed ; which notice shall be given at 
least five days previous to the time appointed. 

§ 36. If the overseer cannot ascertain that such non- 
resident has an agent within such town, he shall affix 
a written notice on the outer door of the building in 
which the last town meeting in such town was held 
containing a list of the names of such non-residents, 
when known, and a description of the tracts of land 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 187 

comprised in his list, together with the number of 
days' labor, assessed on each tract, and a specifica- 
tion of the time when and the place where such la- 
bor is to be performed ; which notice shall be posted 
at least twenty days before the time appointed for 
performing such labor. 

§ 37. Every person liable to work on the high- 
ways, shall work the whole number of days for 
which he shall have been assessed ; but every such 
person, other than an overseer, may elect to commute 
for the same, or for some part thereof, at the rate of 
sixty4wo and a half cents for each day : in which 
case, such commutation money shall be paid to the 
overseer of highways, of the district in which the per- 
son commuting shall reside, to be applied and expend- 
ed by such overseer in the improvement of the roads 
and bridges in the same district. 

§38. Every person intending to commute for his 
assessment, or for any part thereof, shall, within 
twenty-four hours after he shall be notified to appear 
and work on the highways, pay the commutation 
money for the work required of him by such notice ; 
and the commutation shall not be considered as com- 
plete until such money be paid. 

§ 39. Every overseer of highways shall have pow- 
er to require a team ; or a cart, wagon or plough, 
with a pair of horses or oxen, and a man to manage 
them 5 from any person having the same within his 
district, who shall have been assessed three days or 
more, and who shall not have commuted for his as- 
sessment ; and the person furnishing the same upon 
such requisition, shall be entitled to a credit of three 
days for each day's service therewith. 



188 APPENDIX. 

§ 40. Every person assessed to work on the high- 
ways and warned to work, may appear in person 
or by an able bodied man as a substitute ; and the 
person or substitute so appearing, shall actually work 
eight hours in each day, under the penalty of twelve 
and a half cents for every hour such person or substi- 
tute shall be in default, to be imposed as a fine on the 
person assessed. 

§ 41. If any such person or his substitute shall, af- 
ter appearing, remain idle, or not work faithfully, or 
hinder others from working, such offender shall, for 
every offence, forfeit the sum of one dollar. 

§ 42. Every person so assessed and duly notified, 
who shall not commute, and who shall refuse or ne- 
glect to appear as above provided, shall forfeit for ev- 
ery day's refusal or neglect, the sum of one dollar. 
If he was required to furnish a team, carriage, man 
or implements, and shall refuse or neglect to comply, 
he shall be fined as follows : 

1. For wholly omitting to comply with such requi- 
sition, three dollars for each day : 

2. For omitting to furnish a cart, v/agon or plough, 
one dollar for each day : 

3. For omitting to furnish a pair of horses or oxen, 
one dollar for each day : 

4. For omitting to furnish a man to manage the 
team, one dollar for each day. 

§ 43. It shall be the duty of every overseer of high- 
ways, within six days after any person so assessed 
and notified, shall be guilty of any refusal or neglect 
for which a penalty or fine is prescribed in this Title, 
unless a satisfactory excuse shall be rendered to him 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 189 

for such refusal or neglect, to make complaint on oath, 
to one of the justices of the peace of the town. 

§ 44. The justice to whom such complaint shall be 
made, shall forthwith issue a summons directed to 
any constable of the town, requiring him to summons 
such delinquent, to appear forth\vith before such jus- 
tice, at some place to be specified in the summons, to 
shew cause why he should not be fined according to 
law for such refusal or neglect ; which summons shall 
be served personally, or by leaving a copy at his per- 
sonal abode, 

§ 45. If, upon the return of such summons, no suf- 
ficient cause shall be shown to the contrary, the jus- 
tice shall impose such fine as is provided in this Title 
for the oflence complained of, and shall forthwith is- 
sue a warrant under his hand and seal, directed to 
any constable of the town where such delinquent shall 
reside, commanding him to levy such fine, with the 
costs of the proceedings, of the goods and chattels of 
such delinquent. 

§ 46. The constable to whom such warrant shall 
be directed, shall forthwith collect the moneys there- 
in mentioned. He shall pay the fine when collected, 
to the justice who issued the warrant, who is hereby 
required to pay the same to the overseer who entered 
the complaint, to be by him expended in improving 
the roads and bridges in the district of which he is 
overseer. 

§ 47. Every penalty collected for a refusal or neglect 
to appear and work on the highways, shall be set off" 
against the assessment upon which it was founded, 
estimating every dollar collected as a satisfaction for 
one day's work. 



190 APPENDIX. 

§ 48. The acceptance by an overseer of any excuse 
for refusal or neglect, shall not in any case, exempt 
the person excused from commuting for, or working, 
the whole number of days for which he shall have 
been assessed during the year. 

§ 49. Every overseer of highways shall, on or be- 
fore the first day of October, in each year, make out 
and deliver to the supervisor of his town, a list of all the 
lands of non-residents, and of persons unknown, which 
were taxed on his lists, on which the labor assessed 
by the commissioners of highways has not been paid, 
and the amount of labor unpaid ; and the said over^ 
seer, previous to delivering such list, shall make and 
subscribe an affidavit thereon, before some justice of 
the peace of such town, that he has given the notice 
required by the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth section of 
this Title, and that the labor for which such land is 
returned, has not been performed 

§ 50. If any overseer shall refuse or neglect to deliv- 
er such list to the supervisor, as provided in the last 
preceding section, or shall refuse or neglect to make 
the affidavit as therein directed, he shall, for every 
such offence, forfeit the sum of five dollars, and also 
the amount of tax or taxes for labor remaining unpaid, 
at the rate of sixty-two and a half cents for each day ; 
to be recovered by the commissioners of highways of 
the town, and to be applied by them in making and 
improving the roads and bridges in such town. 

§ 51. It shall be the duty of the supervisors of the 
several towns, to receive the lists of the overseers of 
highways, when delivered pursuant to the preceding 
forty-ninth section, and to lay the same before the 
board of supervisors of the county. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 191 

§ 52. It shall be the duty of such board at their next 
meetmg, to cause the amount of such arrearages of 
labor, (estimating a day's labor at sixty-two and a half 
cents) to be levied on the lands so returned, and to be 
collected in the same manner that the contingent 
charges of the county are levied and collected, and to 
order the same, when collected, to be paid over to the 
commissioners of highways of the town, to be by them 
applied to the construction and improvement of the 
roads and bridges in the district, for whose benefit the 
labor was originally assessed. 

§ 53. Every overseer of highways shall, on the se- 
cond Tuesday next preceding the time of holding the 
annual town meeting, in his town within the year for 
which he is elected or apppointed, render to one of 
the commissioners of highways of the town, an ac- 
count in writing, verified by his oath, [which the com- 
missioners of highways are authorized to administer,] 
and containing, 

1. The names of all persons assessed to work on 
the highways in the district of which he is overseer : 

2. The names of all those who have actually work- 
ed on the highways, with the number of days they 
have so worked : 

3. The names of all those who have been fined^ 
and the sums in which they have been fined : 

4. The names of all those who have commuted^ 
and the manner in which the moneys arising from 
fines and commutations have been expended by him : 

5. A list of all lands which he has returned to the 
supervisor for non-payment of taxes, and the amount 
of tax on each tract of land so returned. 



192 ' APPENDIX. 

§ 54. Every such overseer shall also then and there 
pay to the commissioner, all moneys remaining in 
his hands unexpended, to be applied by the commis- 
ioners in making and improving the roads and bridges 
in the town, in such manner as they shall direct. 

§ 55. If any overseer shall refuse or neglet to ren- 
der such account, or if having rendered the same, he 
shall refuse or neglect to pay any balance which may 
then be due from him, he shall, for every such offence, 
forfeit the sum of five dollars, to be recovered with 
the balance of moneys remaining in his hands, by the 
commissioners of highways of the town, and to be ap- 
plied in making and improving the roads and bridges. 
It shall be the duty of the commissioners of highways 
to prosecute for such penalty in every instance in 
which no return is made. 

§ 56. Whenever it shall appear from the annual re- 
turn of any overseer of highways, made in pursuance 
of the fifty-third section of the sixteenth Chapter of 
Title first of the First Part of the Revised Statutes, 
that any person who was assessed to work on the 
highways, (other than non-residents,) has neglected to 
work the whole number of days to him assessed, and 
has not commuted for, or otherwise satisfied such defi- 
ciency, then it shall be the duty of the commissioners 
of highways to re-assess such deficiency to the person 
so delinquent, at the next assessment of work for high- 
way purposes, and to add to it his annual assessment* 

§ 57. Such re-assessment shall not exonerate any 
overseer of highways from any penalty which he may 
have incurred under the sixteenth section of the last 
aforesaid Chapter. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 193 

Art. IV. — Of the laying out of j^uhlic cmd private 
7'oads, and of the alteration or discontinuance 
thereof. 

§ 58. Every person liable to be assessed fbr high- 
way labor, may apply to the commissioners of high- 
ways of the town in which he shall reside, to alter or 
discontinue any road, or to lay out any new road. 
Every such application shall be in writing, addressed 
to the commissioners, and signed by the person ap- 
plying. 

§ 59. Whenever the commissioners of highways 
shall lay out, alter or discontinue any road, either up- 
on application to them or otherwise, they shall cause 
a survey to be made of such road, and shall incorpo- 
rate such survey in an order to be signed by them, 
and to be filed and recorded in the office of the town 
clerk, who shall note the time of recording the same. 

§ 60. It shall be the duty of the town clerk, when- 
ever any order of the commissioners, for laying out, 
altering or discontinuing a road shall be received by 
him, to post a copy of such order on the door of the 
house where the town meeting is usually held; and 
the time hereinafter limited for appealing from any 
such order, shall be computed from the time of re- 
cording the same. 

§ 61. No public or private road shall be laid out 
through any orchard or garden, without the consent 
of the owner thereof, if such orchard be of the growth 
of four years or more, or if such garden have been 
cultivated for four years or more, before the laying 
out of such road. Nor shall any such road be laid 
out through any buildings ; or any fixtures or erec- 
25 



194 APPENDIX. 

tions for the purpose of trade or manufactures j or any 
yards or enclosures necessary to the use and enjoy- 
ment thereof ; without the consent of the owner. 

§ 62. No highway shall be laid out through enclosed, 
improved or cultivated land, without the consent of the 
owner or occupant thereof, unless certified to be ne- 
cessary by the oath of twelve reputable freeholders of 
the town, in the manner hereinafter provided. 

§ 63. Every person who shall apply for the laying 
out of a highway through any such land shall cause 
notices in writing to be posted up at three of the most 
public places of the town, specifying, as near as may 
be, the route of the proposed highway, the several 
tracts of lands through which the same is proposed 
to be laid, and the time and place at which the free- 
holders will meet to examine the ground. Every 
such notice shall be posted up at least six days before 
the time specified therein for the meeting of the free- 
holders. 

§ 64. If twelve reputable freeholders of the town, 
not interested in the lands through which the road is 
to be laid, nor of kin to the owner thereof, shall ap- 
pear at the time and place specified in the notice, they 
shall then be sworn by [a justice of the peace or] any 
officer authorized to administer oaths, well and truly 
to examine and certify, in regard to the necessity and 
propriety of the highway applied for. 

§ 65. They shall then personally examine the route 
of such highway, and shall hear any reason that may 
be offered for or against laying out the same. If they 
shall be of opinion that such highway is necesary 
and proper, they shall make and subscribe a certifi- 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 195 

cate in writing to that effectj which shall be deliver- 
ed to the commissioners of highways of the town. 

§ 66. Before the commissioners shall determine to 
lay out the highway so applied for and certified, they 
shall cause notice in writing to be given to the occu- 
pant of the land through which the road is to run, of 
the time and place at which they will meet to decide 
on the application. The notice shall be served by 
delivering the same to such occupant, or if he be ab- 
sent, by leaving the same at his dwelling-house ; and 
in either case, at least three days before the time of 
meeting. 

§ 67. The commissioners shall meet at the time 
specified in the notice, and shall hear any reasons 
that may be oifered for or against laying out the high- 
wayv If they shall determine to lay out such high- 
way, they shall make out and subscribe a certificate 
of such determination, describing the road so laid out, 
particularly, by routes and bounds and by its courses 
and distance, and shall deposite the same with the 
town clerk. 

§ 68. The damages sustained by reason of the lay- 
ing out and opening such road may be ascertained by 
the agreement of the owner and the commissioners o^^ 
highways, provided such damages do not exceed 
twenty-five dollars; and unless such agreement be 
made, or the owner of the land shall in writing re- 
lease all claims to damages, the same shall be assess- 
ed in the manner prescribed in the next section, be- 
fore such road shall be opened, or worked,, or used. 
Every such agreement and release shall be filed in 
the town clerk's office, and shall forever preclude such 
owner from all further claim for such damages. 



196 APPENDIX. 

§ 69. On the application of the commissioners of 
highways, or of the owner of the land through which 
such road is laid out, to any two justices of the peace 
of the town, they shall issue their warrant to some 
constable of some other town of the same county, 
neither interested, nor of kin to any person interest- 
ed, in the land through which the road is laid out ; 
directing him to summon twelve disinterested free- 
holders, residing in some other town than that in 
which such road is laid out. and not of kin to the 
owner of such land, to assess the damages sustained 
by the laying out such road ; and shall therein spe- 
cify the time and place at which the jury shall meet. 

§70, Upon such freeholders appearing, the justices 
who issued the warrant, shall draw by lot, six of the 
names of the persons attending, to serve as a jury ; 
and the first six persons drawn, who shall be free 
from all legal exceptions, shall be the jury to assess 
the said damages. 

§ 71. In all cases of the assessment of such dama- 
ges, the persons by whom the assessment is to be 
made, shall view and examine the premises ; and be- 
fore making their determination, the freeholders ma- 
king the same, shall be sworn well and truly to deter- 
mine and assess such damages. 

§ 72. The verdict of the jury assessing such dama- 
ges, shall be received and certified by the two justices 
who issued the warrant for summoning them, and 
shall be delivered by them to the commissioners of 
highways of the town. 

§ 73. Such commissioners shall cause a copy of the 
said verdict, with a statement of the charges and ex- 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 197 

penses, to be delivered to the supervisor of the town, 
who shall lay the same before the board of supervisors 
of the county. The board shall have power to ex- 
amine into the principles on which such assessment 
shall have been made, and into the fairness and jus- 
tice thereof, and to increase or reduce the damages, 
as in their judgment shall be just and reasonable. 

§ 74. The amount of damages, as finally settled by 
the board of supervisors, or as liquidated by the com- 
missioners of highways, as provided in the sixty- 
eighth section of this Title, together with the charges 
of the commissioners of highways, justices, surveyors 
and other persons or officers employed in making the 
assessment, shall be levied and collected in the town 
within which the highway shall be situated. The 
moneys so collected, shall be paid to the commission- 
ers of highways of the same town, who shall pay to 
the owner the sum assessed to him, and appropriate 
the residue to satisfy the charges. 

§ 75. Where any person shall be the owner of any 
land over which any highway shall run, and such 
highway shall be discontinued, in whole or in part, 
by reason of some other road to be established and 
laid out under this Title, through the lands of the 
same person, the persons who shall assess the dama- 
Sfes shall take into calculation the value of the road so 
discontinued, and the benefit resulting to such person 
by reason of such discontinuance, and shall deduct 
the same from the damages assessed for the opening 
and laying out such new road ; and thereupon the 
owner of the land may enclose so much of the high- 
way so discontinued, as shall belong to him. 



198 APPENDIX. 

§ 76. When the commissioners of highways of any 
town shall disagree with the commissioners of any 
other town in the same county, relating to the laying 
out of a new road, or the alteration of an old road, 
extending into both towns ; or when the commission- 
ers of a town in one county shall disagree with the 
commissioners of a town in another county, relative 
to laying out a new road, or altering an old road, 
which shall extend into both counties ; the commis- 
sioners of both towns shall meet together at the re- 
quest of either disagreeing commissioners, and make 
their determination upon such subject of disagree- 
ment. 

§ 77. Whenever it shall become necessary to have 
a highway upon the line between two towns, such 
highway shall be laid out by two or more of the com- 
missioners of highways of each of said towns, either 
upon such line, or as near thereto as the convenience 
of the ground will admit ; and they may so vary the 
same either to the one or the other side of such line, 
as they may think proper. 

§ 78. It shall be the duty of the same commission- 
ers, when they lay out such highway, to divide it into 
two or more road districts, in such manner, that the 
labor and expense of opening, working and keeping 
in repair such highway, through each of the said dis- 
tricts, may be equal as near as may be, and to allot 
an equal number of the said districts to each of the 
said towns. 

§ 79. Each district shall be considered as wholly 
belonging to the town to which it shall be allotted, 
for the purpose of opening and improving the road, 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 199 

and for keeeping it in repair; and the commissioners 
shall cause such highway^ and the partition and al- 
lotment thereof, to be recorded in the office of the 
town clerk in each of their respective towns. 

§ SO. All highways heretofore laid out upon the 
line between any two towns, shall be divided, allotted, 
recorded and kept in repair, in the manner above di- 
rected. 

§ 81. "Whenever application shall be made to the 
commissioners of highways of any town, for a private 
road, they shall summon twelve disinterested freehold- 
ers of the town where the land through which such 
road is proposed to be laid out, is situated, to meet on 
a day certain ; of which day, notice shall be given to 
the owner or occupant of such land. Such freehold- 
ers, when met, shall be sworn as above provided, and 
shall then proceed to view the lands through which 
such road is applied for. 

§ B2. If they shall determine that such road is ne- 
cessary, they shall make and subscribe a certificate in 
manner aforesaid, and the commissioners shall there- 
upon lay out the road, and cause a record thereof to 
be made in the town clerk's office. The damasfes of 
the owner of the land through which such road shall 
be laid out, shall be ascertained or asssessed in like 
manner as if the same was a public highway, and 
such damages shall be paid by the person applying 
for the road. 

§ 83. Every such private road, when so laid out, 
shall be for the use of such applicant, his heirs and 
assigns ; but not to be converted to any other use or 
purpose, than that of a road. Nor shall the occupant 



200 APPENDIX. 

or owner of the land through, which said road shall 
be laid out, be permitted to use the same as a road, 
unless he shall have signified his intention of so ma- 
king use of the same, to the jury or commissioners, 
who ascertained the damages sustained by laying out 
such road, and before such damages were so ascer- 
tained. 

§ 84. All public roads to be laid out by the commis- 
sioners of highways of any town, shall not be less 
than three rods wide, and all private roads shall not 
be more than three rods wide. 

§ 85. Whenever application shall be made for the 
discontinuance of an old road, on the ground that it 
has become useless and unnecessary, the commission- 
ers of highways, to whom such application shall be 
made, shall summon twelve disinterested freeholders 
of the town, to meet on a day certain, to consider 
such application. Such freeholders when met, shall 
be sworn well and truly to examine and certify in re- 
gard to the propriety of such discontinuance. 

§ 86. They shall then proceed to view such road, 
and if they shall be of opinion that the same is use- 
less and unnecessary, they shall make and subscribe 
a certificate in writing to that effect, which shall be 
delivered to the commissioners of highways, who 
shall thereupon proceed to decide upon such applica- 
tion. 

§ 87. All applications, certificates and other papers 
relating to the laying out, altering or discontinuing 
of any road, shall be filed by the commissioners of 
highways, as soon as they shall have decided there- 
on, in the office of the town clerk of the town. 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 201 

§ 88. Every person who shall conceive himself ag- 
grieved by any determination of the commissioners 
of highways, either in laying out, altering or discon- 
tinuing, or in refusing to lay out, alter or discontinue 
any road, may at any time within sixty days there- 
after, appeal to any three of the judges of the court 
of common pleas of tlie county, in which such road 
is situated. But an appeal by one person, and a de- 
cision thereon, shall not conclude nor affect the 
rights of any other person, who shall appeal within 
the limited period. 

§ 89. The judges to whom the first appeal from 
any such determination shall be made, shall have ex- 
clusive jurisdiction of all appeals from the same de- 
termination, to the end that their decision when made 
may embrace the whole subject ] and for this purpose 
they shall suspend all proceedings upon the appeal 
first made, and upon all other appeals received by 
them from such determination, until the time limited 
for such appeals shall have expired. 

§ 90. Every such appeal shall be in writing, ad- 
dressed to the judges, and signed by the party appeal- 
ing. It shall briefly state the ground upon which it is 
made, and whether it is brought to reverse entirely 
the determination of the commissioners, or only to re- 
verse a part thereof; and in the latter case, it shall 
specify what part, 

§ 91. It shall be the duty of the judges to whom the 
appeal is made, to proceed thereon as soon as may be 
convenient. Where the determination appealed from 
was against an application for laying out, altering or 
discontinuing a road, the judges shall give notice to 
26 



202 APPENDIX. 

the commissioners by whom such determination was 
made. Where the appeal is from a determination in 
favor of an appUcation for laying out, altering or 
discontinuing a road, the notice shall be given to the 
commissioners, and to one or more of the applicants 
for such road. In all cases, the notice shall specify 
the time and place, at which the judges will convene 
to hear the appeal. 

§92. Every such notice shall be served at least 
eight days before the time mentioned therein, by de- 
livering the same to one of the commissioners whose 
determination is appealed from, or by leaving the 
same at his dwelling-house. If the notice be also di- 
rected to an applicant, it shall be served in the same 
manner. 

§ 93. It shall be the duty of the judges to convene 
at the time and place mentioned in the notice, and to 
hear the proofs and allegations of the parties. They 
shall have power to issue process to compel the attend- 
ance of witnesses, and may adjourn from time to time, 
as may be necessary. Their decision, or that of any 
two of them, shall be conclusive in the premises, and 
every such decision, shall be reduced to writing, be 
signed by the judges making it^ and be filed by them 
in the office of the town clerk of the town, who shall 
record the same. 

§ 94. Every such judge shall be entitled to receive 
two dollars for every day employed in the hearing 
and the decision of such appeal, to be paid by the par- 
ty appealing where the determination of the commis- 
sioner shall be affirmed ; but where it is reversed, to 
be a charge against the comity. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 203 

§ 95. Where an appeal shall have been made from 
a determination of commissioners refusing to lay out 
or alter a road, and the judges shall reverse such, de- 
termination, such judges shall lay out or alter the 
road, applied for ; and in doing so, shall proceed in 
the same manner in which commissioners of higrh- 
v^ays are directed to proceed, in the like cases. Such 
road shall be opened by the commisssioners of the 
town, in the same manner as if laid out by themselves. 

§ 96. In case the office of any one of the judges to 
whom such appeal shall be made, shall become va- 
cant before the determination of such appeal, it shall 
be the duty of the remaining judges named therein, 
to associate with themselves another of the judges of 
the same court, who shall act with them in all subse- 
quent proceedings, in the same manner as if he had 
been originally named in such appeal. 

§ 97. No road which has been fixed by the decision 
of the judges on an appeal to them, shall be discontin- 
ued or altered, so long as such judges, or either of 
them shall continue in commission, except by the or- 
der of the same judges, or such of them as continue 
in commission, joined with such other judge or judges, 
as shall be necessary to make three ; such additional 
judge or judges, to be selected by the person applying 
for the discontinuance or alteration. 

§ 98. If no one of the said judges shall continue in 
commission, such application shall be made to any 
three of the judges of the same court, not having any 
interest in the road so desired to be discontinued or 
altered. 

§ 99. No application made under either of the two 



204 APPENDIX. 

last preceding sections, shall be acted upon by the 
judges, unless the same be accompanied by a certifi- 
cate, signed by the commissioners of highways of the 
town in which the road is situated, stating their ap- 
probation of such application ; and before the judges 
decide thereon, they shall proceed to view the road, 
so desired to be discontinued or altered. They shall 
be entitled to the same compensation as above pro- 
vided, to be paid by the applicant. 

§ 100. Whenever the commissioners of highways 
shall have laid out any public highway, through any 
enclosed, cultivated or improved lands, in conformity 
to the provisions of this Title, and their determination 
shall not have been appealed from, they shall give 
the owner or occupant of the land through which 
such road shall have been laid, sixty days' notice in 
writing, to remove his fences. If such owner shall 
not remove his fences within the sixty days, the com- 
missioners shall cause such fences to be removed, and 
shall direct the road to be opened and worked. 

§ 101. If the determination of the commissioners 
shall have been appealed from, then the sixty days' 
notice shall be given, after the decision of the judges 
upon such appeal, shall have been filed in the office 
of the town clerk of the town. 

§ 102. The acts and doings of the commissioners 
of highways of the several towns in this state, or of 
any two of them, in laying out, altering or discon- 
tinuing any road or highway, since the first day of 
December, one thousand eight hundred and five, and 
prior to the fourteenth day of April, one thousand 
eight hundred and twenty-six, are confirmed from 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 205 

the last mentioned day ; provided such commission- 
ers, or any two of them, shall have caused a survey 
of such roads or highways to be filed and recorded in 
the office of the town clerk of the town. But such 
confirmation shall not affect any decision of the 
judges of the court of common pleas, made prior to 
the fourteenth day of April, one thousand eight hun, 
dred and twenty-six, confirming or reversing the 
determination of the said commissioners; nor any 
appeal from such determination, made within six 
months after that day ; nor any suits or proceedings 
which on that day were pending, at law or in equity. 

§ 103. Every public highway already laid out, that 
shall not have been opened and worked within six 
years from the time of its being so laid out, and every 
such highway hereafter to be laid out, that shall not 
be opened and worked, within the like period, shall 
cease to be a road for any purpose whatever. 

§ 104. All public highways now in use, heretofore 
laid out and allowed by any law of this state, of 
which a record shall have been made in the office of 
the clerk of the county or town ; and all roads not 
recorded, which have been or shall have been used 
as public highways, for twenty years or more ; shall 
be deemed public highways, but may be altered in 
conformity to the provisions of this Title. 

§ 105. It shall be the duty of the commissioners of 
highways, to order the overseers of highways to open 
all roads to the width of two rods at least, which they 
shall judge to have been used as public highways for 
twenty years. 



206 APPENDIX. 

Art. V. — Regulations and iitcnalties concerning' 

the ohstructions of highway s^ and encroachments 

thereon. 

§ 106. Whoever shall obstruct any highway, or 
shall fill up or place any obstruction in any ditch 
constructed for draining the water from any highway, 
shall forfeit for every such offence, the sum of five 
dollars. 

§ 107. In every case where a highway shall have 
been laid out, and the same has been or shall be en- 
croached upon by fences, erected by any occupant of 
the land through or by which such highway runs, 
the commissioners of highways of the town, shall, if 
in their opinion it be deemed necessary, order such 
fences to be removed, so that such highway may be 
of the breadth originally intended. The commission- 
ers making the order, shall cause the same to be re. 
duced to writing, and signed. They shall also give 
notice in writing, to the occupant of the land, to re- 
move such fences within sixty days. Every such or- 
der and notice shall specify the breadth of the road 
orginally intended, the extent of the encroachment, 
and the place or places in which the same shall be. 

§ 108. If such removal shall not be made, within 
sixty days after the service of such notice, the occu- 
pant to whom the notice shall be given, shall forfeit 
the sum of fifty cents for every day, after the expira- 
tion of that time, for which such fences shall continue 
unremoved. 

§109. If the occupant to whom notice is given, 
shall deny such encroachment, the commissioners, or 
some one of them, shall apply to any justice of the 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 207 

peace of the county, for a precept directed to any con- 
stable of the town, to summon twelve freeholders 
thereof, to meet at a certain day and place, to be spe- 
cified in such precept, and not less than four days after 
the issuing thereof, to inquire into the premises. The 
constable to whom such precept shall be directed^ 
shall give at least three day's notice to the commis- 
sioners of highways of the town, and to the occupant 
of the land, of the time and place at which such free- 
holders are to meet. 

§ 110. On the day specified in the precept, the jury 
so summoned, shall be sworn by such justice, well 
and truly to inquire whether any such encroachment 
has been made, and by whom. Such witnesses a§ 
may be produced by either party, shall also be sworn 
by such justice ; and the jury shall hear the proofs 
and allegations which may be produced and submit-^ 
ted. 

§ 111. If the jury find that any encroachment has 
been made, they shall make and subscribe a certificate 
in writing, stating the particulars of such encroach- 
ment, and by whom made ; which shall be filed in 
the ofiice of the town clerk. The occupant of the 
land, whether such encroachment shall have beers 
made by him, or by any former occupant, shall re- 
move his fences within sixty days after the filing of 
such certificate, under the penalty provided in the on© 
hundred and eighth section of this Title. He shall 
also pay the costs of such inquiry ; and if the same 
shall not be paid within ten days, the justice shall is- 
sue a warrant for the collection thereof, in the man- 
ner provided in the forty-fifth section of this Title. 



208 APPENDIX. 

§ 113. If tlio jury find that no encroachment has 
been made, they shall so certify, and shall also ascer- 
tain and certify the damages which the then occupant 
shall have sustained by such proceeding; which, to- 
gether with the costs thereof, shall be paid by the 
commissioners, and shall be a charge in their favor 
against the town by which they shall have been 
elected. 

§ 113. No persoh shall be required to remove any 
fence under the preceding provisions of this Article, 
except between the- first day of April and the first day 
of November in any year. 

§ 114. If any tree shall Fall, or be fallen by any per- 
son from any enclosed land into any highway, any 
person may give notice to the occupant of the land 
from which such tree shall have fallen, to remove the 
same within two days. If such tree shall not be re- 
moved within that time, but shall continue in such 
highway, the occtipant of the land shall forfeit the 
sum of fifty cents for every day thereafter, until such 
Iree shall be removed. 

§ 115. In case any person shall cut down any tree 
"on land not occupied by him, so that it shall fall into 
any highway, river or stream, unless by the order and 
tjonsent of the occupant, the person so offending, shall 
forfeit to such occupant, the sum of one dollar for ev- 
-ery tree so fallen, and the like sum for every day the 
•same shall remain in such highway, river or stream. 

§ 116. Whoever shall cut, or cause to be cut down, 
any tree, so that the same shall fall into any river or 
stream, which now is or hereafter shall be declared a 
public highway, and shall not remove the same out 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 209 

of such river or stream, within twenty-four hours 
thereafter, shall forfeit five dollars for every tree so 
cut down and left remaining. 

§ 117. No swinging or other gates shall be allowed 
on any public highway, laid out by virtue of this 
Title, or which has heretofore been laid out, other 
than such public highways as run through lands 
liable to be overflowed by the waters of the adjacent 
rivers or streams, in such manner as to remove the 
fence thereon. 

§ 118. Such gates shall be erected and kept in good 
repair, by the overseers of highways of the town, at 
the proper costs and charges of the occupant of the 
land, for whose benefit the same shall be erected. 

§119. If more than one gate shall be erected, and 
the intermediate land between the gates, at the extre- 
mities of such lands, shall be in the occupation of 
more than one person benefitted by such gates, the 
whole charge of erecting and keeping the same in re- 
pair-j shall be borne by all the occupants benefitted 
thereby, in proportion to the extent of land each oc- 
cupies adjoining the highway, between the gates at 
the extremities aforesaid. 

§ 120. The overseer of every road district in which 
such gates shall be, shall, on or before the first day of 
November in every year, make out and file with the 
town clerk, a statement of the charges incurred in the 
erection or repairing of such gates, with the name of 
the person bound to defray the same ; which account 
shall be verified by the oath of such overseer. If 
more than one person is liable to defray such charges, 
the statement shall also contain an apportionment 
27 



210 APPENDIX. 

thereof between such persons, stating the amount to 
be paid by each. 

§ 121. The overseer shall, within ten days after 
filing the statement, demand of every person bound 
to pay such charges, or to contribute thereto, the sum 
due from him according to such statement ; and if any 
person shall refuse or neglect to pay such moneys 
within six days after demand, it shall be the duty of 
the overseer to make complaint to a justice of the 
peace of the town, and the like proceedings shall be 
had for the recovery of such moneys, as in the recov- 
ery of fines, for refusing or neglecting to work on the 
highways. 

§ 122. The commissioners of highways shall file an 
account of such gates in the town clerk's office ; and 
if any person shall open any such gate, and shall not, 
immediately after having passed the same, close it, or 
shall wilfully or unnecessarily ride over any grounds 
adjoining the road on which such gates shall be per- 
mitted, he shall forfeit to the party injured, treble 
damages. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 211 



TURNPIKE CORPORATIONS. 

Art. 1. — Of the mode of incorporating Turnpike 

Comjyanies, and of the choiee and powers of the 

directors. 

Section 1. All such persons as shall hereafter be 
incorporated by an act of the legislature, for the pur- 
pose of making a turnpike road, shall be a body cor- 
porate, by the name given in the act of incorporation ; 
and as such, they and their successors shall have 
power to purchase, hold and enjoy such real and per- 
sonal estate, not exceeding the amount to be prescri- 
bed in such act, as shall be necessary to fulfil the ends 
of their incorporation. 

§ 2. Each of the persons who shall be named in 
such act, as a commissioner for receiving subscrip- 
tions, shall furnish himself with a book for that pur- 
pose, which shall be kept open for two years, unless 
one-sixth of the whole number of shares shall be soon- 
er subscribed. 

§ 3. Each subscriber shall pay to the commissioner 
receiving his subscription, and at that time, on each 
share that he shall subscribe, one-tenth of the sum 
fixed in the act of incorporation, as the amount of one 
share, and the residue to the president and directors 
to be elected, at such time and place, as they shall 
from time to time require. The shares subscribed 
shall be deemed and considered to be personal estate. 

§ 4. As soon as one-sixth part of the whole number 



312 APPENDIX. 

of shares fixed in such act, as the capital of the corpo^ 
ration, shall have been subscribed, the commissioners 
shall, by advertisement to be published in two of the 
public newspapers printed nearest to the route of the 
road, give at least thirty days' notice, of the time and 
place, when and where, the subscribers shall meet te 
choose directO'rs. 

§ 5, At the election so appointed, the commission- 
ers present shall preside ; and the subscribers present, 
or their proxies, by a plurality of votes, shall elect by 
ballot nine stockholders, to be directors of the corpo-^ 
ration for the ensuing year. 

§ 6. The commissioners shall- deliver their respect- 
ive subscription books, to the directors so chosen afi 
their first meeting, and shall then pay over to such 
directors, the moneys received by them, respectively, 
on such subscriptions. 

§ 7. An election for directors shall thereafter be an- 
nually held, on the same day of the same month on 
which the first election was held ; and at each elec- 
tion, including the first, the stockholders present, by 
a plurality of votes, shall elect by ballot, three per- 
sons, to preside at the next succeeding election. 

§ 8. If an annual election shall not be held on the 
day fixed by law, it shall be held in the same manner, 
and with the like effect, on some early day, to be ap- 
pointed by the directors then in ofiice, who shall give 
and publish the same notice thereof, as is required in 
respect to the first election ; and who after the day on 
which such election ought to have been held, shall be 
incapacitated from doing any act as directors, except 
such as may be necessary to give effect to the election 
so to be appointed. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 213 

§ 9. The persons presiding at each election, shall 
immediately after receiving the ballots, openly esti- 
mate the votes, and thereupon make and subscribe a 
certificate of the result. Of the first election, they 
shall make a return to the directors chosen, at their 
first meeting thereafter. 

§ 10. Each stockholder, in person or by proxy, 
shall, at each election, be entitled, on the shares then 
held by him, to one vote for each share, to the num- 
ber of ten, and for every five shares above that num- 
ber, to one additional vote. 

§ 11. Five directors shall be a board for the trans- 
action of business, and the acts of a majority of the 
board shall bind the corporation. 

§ 12. The directors, at their first meeting after their 
election, shall elect by ballot one of their number as 
president. 

§ 13. The board shall supply every vacancy that 
may occur in. the office of a director, and the person 
chosen shall hold his office until the next annual 
election. They shall also supply from the directors, 
every vacancy that shall occur in the office of presi- 
dent; and one of the members present shall be cho- 
sen by a plurality of votes, to preside at every meeting 
of the board, from which the president shall be absent. 

§ 14. The president and directors shall have power, 
and it shall be their duty, 

1. To meet from time to time, at such place as they 
may deem expedient : 

2. To make such by-laws, rules and regulations, as 
in their judgment, the affairs of the corporation shall 
require : 



214 APPENDIX. 

3. To appoint such subordiuatG officers, artists and 
workmen, as they shall deem necessary to execute the 
business of the corporation : 

4. To continue to receive subscriptions of shares, 
until their whole capital stock shall be subscribed, un- 
less it shall have been ascertained, that a less sum 
will be sufficient to fulfil the ends of their incorpora- 
tion : 

5. To demand at such time and in such proportion 
as they shall see fit, from the respective stockholders, 
the sums of money due on their respective shares, 
under pain of the forfeiture of such shares, and of all 
previous payments thereon, to the corporation : 

6. To declare by a by-law in what manner and 
under what restrictions, the shares of their capital 
stock shall be transferrable : 

7. To construct, complete, and keep in constant 
repair, the road, with all the necessary buildings and 
appurtenances, for the making of which they shall 
have been incorporated : 

8. To keep a fair and just account of all tolls re- 
ceived, and of all moneys disbursed, and deducting- 
costs and charges, to make and declare a dividend of 
the clear profits and income of the road, among the 
stockholders, on the first Tuesday of May, and the 
first Tuesday of November, in every year : 

9. To publish a notice of each dividend, in one or 
more of the public newspapers printed nearest to the 
route of the road, and of the time and place of the 
payment thereof, and to pay the same accordingly : 

10. To report to the comptroller, within six months 
after the road shall be completed, an account of the 



TREATISE ON ROADS, 215 

expenses of its construction, and to exhibit annually 
to the comptroller, an account of the sums arising 
from the tolls, of the disbursements and of the divi- 
dends actually made within the year. 

§ 15. Every company so incorporated shall cea§e t& 
be a body corporate, 

1, If within two years from their incorporation',' 
they shall not have commenced the construction ot 
the road described in the act of incorporation : and 

2. If within five years from such incorporation j 
such road shall not be completed according to the 
provisions of this Title, and of the act of incorpora- 
tion. 

§ 16. Every such corporation may be dissolved by 
the legislature, when by the income arising from tolls, 
it shall have been compensated for all moneys expend- 
ed in purchasing, making, repairing and taking care 
of its road, and have received in addition thereto, an 
average annual interest at the rate of ten per cent ; 
and on such dissolution, all the rights and property of 
such corporation, shall vest in the people of this state. 

Art. II. — Of the construction of the road, and of the 
appraisement of damages. 

§ 17. The road directed to be made by each com- 
pany so incorporated, shall be laid out by three, or 
any two of three, commissioners to be appointed by 
the governor: such commissioners must not be inte- 
rested in any turnpike road, nor live in a county 
through which the road directed shall pass. 

§ 18. It shall be the duty of such commissioners, 
1. To lay out the road directed, without favor or 



216 APPENDIX. 

partiality, according to their best judgment and un- 
derstanding, in such manner as shall best promote 
the objects of the corporation, and the interests of the 
public I 

2. To cause to be made an accurate map of their 
survey of such road, in every county through which 
it shall pass, designating therein the several particu- 
lar points near or through which it passes, and to de- 
posit and jfile such map in the office of the clerk of the 
county. 

§ 19. Each commissioner, for each day he shall be 
necessarily employed in the performance of such du^ 
ty, shall receive the sum of three dollars, to be paidj 
together with the expenses of surveys and maps, by 
the corporation to which the road shall belong. 

§ 20. Such road shall be constructed by the presi- 
dent and directors of such corporation, in the manner 
following : 

1. It shall be laid out not less than four rods widej 
and twenty-two feet of such width shall be bedded 
with stone, gravel, sound wood, or other hard sub- 
stance, well compacted, and of sufficient depth to se- 
cure a good and solid foundation : 

2. It shall be faced with gravel or broken stonCj of 
^ depth not less than nine inches, in such manner as 
to secure a firm and even surface, rising in the mid- 
dle by a gradual arch : 

3. The ditches on each side thereof shall, when 
practicable, be so made, as to render easy the passing 
of sleighs therein, and shall be so formed as to permit 
carriages conveniently to pass on and off' the turnpike, 
where it shall be intersected by other roads. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 217 

4. It shall be made of such width as may be practi- 
cable, not less than twenty-two feet in any one place; 
and without a ditch on the lower side in each place 
where, on account of the steepness of side-hills or 
rocks, it cannot, in the opinion of the commissioners, 
be made of the full width above required : 

5. The lower side, where it shall not be of full 
width, shall be furnished with a strong and sufficient 
fender or railing, of the height of at least- four feet 
above the surface of the road along which such fender 
shall be constructed. 

§21. A mile stone or post shall be erected and 
maintained by the corporation on each mile of the 
road, on which shall be fairly and legibly marked or 
inscribed, the distance of such stone or post from the 
place of the commencement of the road ; and when 
such road shall commence at the end of any other 
road, having mile stones or posts, on which the dis- 
tance from any city or town is marked, a continuation 
of that distance shall in like manner be inscribed. 

§ 22. A guide post shall also be erected at the inter- 
section of every public road, leading into or from the 
turnpike, on which shall be inscribed the name of the 
place to which such intersecting road leads, in the di- 
rection to which the name on the guide post shall 
point. 

§ 23. No director of the corporation to which it shall 
belong, shall be concerned directly or indirectly in 
any contract for the making or working of the road, 
or any part thereof, during the time he shall be a di- 
rector. 

§ 24. No contractor for the making of such road, or 
28 



218 APPENDIX. 

any part thereof, shall make a new contract for the 
performance of his work, or any part thereof, other 
than by hiring hands, teams, carriages or utensils, to 
be superintended and paid by himself, unless such 
new contract and its terms be laid before the board of 
directors, and be approved by them. 

§ 25. After the road shall have been laid out by the 
commissioners, the president and directors of the com- 
pany to which it shall belong, may agree with the 
owners of the land through which it shall pass, for 
the purchase of so much thereof as shall be necessary 
for the making of the road, and the accommodation 
of gates, toll-houses, and other works thereto belong- 
ing. 

§ 26. In every case where the owner of land so re- 
quired, shall be absent from the county, or shall not 
from any cause be capable in law, so to agree, or shall 
refuse to agree, the value of such land, and the dama- 
ges to the owners, shall be ascertained, in the man- 
ner following : 

J. One of the judges not interested in the road, of 
the court of common pleas of the county in which the 
land shall be situated, upon application of the presi- 
dent and directors, shall by an instrument in writing, 
signed by him, appoint three freeholders of the coun- 
ty, not inhabitants of any town through which the 
road shall pass, and not interested in the road or lands 
to be appraised, as appraisers. 

2. The president and directors shall give notice to 
the appraisers of their appointment, and the apprais- 
ers, or any two of them, shall thereupon name a day 
for meeting on the land, and performing the duties re- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 219 

quired of them ; which day shall not be more than 
twenty, nor less than ten days, from such notice of 
their appointment. 

3. The president and directors shall give at least 
ten days' notice to the owners of the land required, of 
the time and place of meeting, so appointed by the ap- 
praisers ; but if any such owner be absent, or subject 
to any legal disability to contract, a copy of such no- 
tice may be left at the dwelhng-house of such owner, 
or at some public place on the Jands to be appraised. 

4. Each appraiser, before he shall proceed to exe- 
cute his trust, shall take and subscribe in writing, be- 
fore a justice of the peace in the county, the oath or 
affirmation prescribed in the constitution of this state. 

5. The appraisers shall then proceed to view the 
premises, and without favor or partiality, to assess the 
damages sustained by the respective owners of the 
lands deemed necessary by the president and direct- 
ors, to be taken and appropriated for the road. 

6. They shall make an inquisition, under their 
hands and seals, or the hands and seals of any two of 
them, describing such land, and stating the amount of 
damages, if any, which each owner of lands or im- 
provements so taken and appropriated, has sustained, 
or will sustain, in consequence thereof: 

7. The inquisition shall be acknowledged by the 
appraisers signing it, before one of the judges of the 
county in which the lands are situated, and so ac- 
knowledged, shall be filed by them, together with 
their oath or affirmation of office, in the clerk's office 
of such county, within thirty days after it shall have 
been made, to be by such clerk recorded in a book for 
recording deeds, at the expense of the corporation. 



220 APPENDIX. 

§ 27. The president and directors, upon payment 
of the several sums so assessed as damages, in the in- 
quisition so made, or upon making a legal tender 
thereof, when the moneys shall be refused, shall be 
entitled to enter on the lands described in the inquisi- 
tion, and shall have and hold the same, to them, their 
successors and assigns forever. 

§ 28. If on any parcel of the lands so described, 
there shall be no person then living, authorized to re- 
ceive the damages assessed for such parcel, and such 
damages shall not have been lawfully demanded, 
within ten days after the filing of such inquisition, the 
president and directors may enter thereon, without 
payment or tender of such damages ; but subject to 
such payment whenever the same shall be thereafter 
lawfully required. 

§ 29. Such president and directors shall not enter 
on and take possession of any public highway, until 
it shall have been appraised and paid for, in the same 
manner as private property, and the amount apprais- 
ed for each highway so taken, shall be paid to the 
commissioners of highways in the town to which it 
shall belong, to be by them applied in improving the 
roads in such town. 

§ 30. Whenever an appraisement shall be made of 
the lands on any old road, used as such by prescrip- 
tion, on which a turnpike shall be laid out, the ap- 
praisers shall set down the value of the soil and of the 
improvements, and the moneys paid by any town for 
making such improvements, in separate sums ; and 
the sum for which the soil is appraised shall be paid 
to the owners thereof, and the value of the improve- 



TREATISE ON ROAI>S, 221 

merits, and the sums paid therefor, by any town, shall 
be paid to the commissioners of highways of the town 
in which such old road shall be situated. 

§ 31. The president and directors procuring the ap- 
pointment, shall pay to the judge for appointing ap- 
praisers, one dollar, and to each appraiser, two dollars 
for every day he shall be necessarily employed in his 
duties as such. 

Art. III. — Of tolls, mid their collection. 

§ 32. As soon as the president and directors of any 
company incorporated under this Title shall have 
completed their road, or any ten miles thereof, they 
shall give notice thereof to the governor, who shall 
thereupon appoint three discreet freeholders, not in- 
terested in any turnpike, to view the road as descri- 
bed in the notice, and to report to him, in writing, 
whether the same is completed in a workmanlike 
manner, according to the requisitions of this Title, 
and of the act of incorporation. 

§33. If such report shall be in the affirmative, it 
shall be the duty of the governor, by license under 
his hand, and the privy seal of the state, to permit 
the president and directors to erect so many gates and 
turnpikes on the road reported, as- shall be sufficient 
for the collection thereon, of the tolls authorized by 
law. 

§ 34. The president and directedrs shall then ap- 
point toll-gatherers to collect, at each gate so erected, 
from the persons using the road, such toll as shall be 
authorized in their act of incorporation. 

§35. Each toll-gatherer may detain and prevent 



222 APPENDIX. 

from passing through his gate, the persons riding, 
leading or driving animals or carriages subject to toll, 
until they shall have paid respctively the tolls author- 
ized by law. 

§36. No tolls shall be collected at any gate of any 
company incorporated under this Title in either of 
the fallowing cases ; 

1. From any person passing to or from public wor- 
ship, or a funeral ; to or from a grist mill for grinding 
of grain for family use ; or to or from the blacksmith's 
shop to which he usually resorts for work there to be 
done. 

2. From any person going for a physician or mid- 
wife, or returning from such errand ; going to or re- 
turning from court when legally summoned as a juror 
or witness ; going to or returning from a militia train- 
ing, which by law, he is required to attend ; or going 
to a town meeting or election at which he is entitled 
to vote, for the purpose of giving such vote, and re- 
turning therefrom : 

3. From any person residing within one mile of 
the gate at which toll is demanded, unless he shall be 
employed in the carriage or transportation of the prop- 
erty of other persons, not so residing: 

4. From troops in the service of this state, or of the 
United States. 

§ 37. From carriages having wheels, of which the 
tire or track is, 

1, Twelve inches wide, no tolls : 

2, Nine inches wide, one-fourth only of the tolls 
otherwise payable : 

3, Six inches wide, one-half only of such tolls, 
Shall be collected. 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 223 

§ 38. It shall be the duty of the president and di- 
rectors, to affix and keep up, at or over each gate, in 
some conspicuous place, so as to be conveniently 
read, a printed list of the rates of toll demandable at 
such gate. 

Art. IV. — General 2^rovisions emhracing coiyord-' 

tions now existing. 

§ 39. In each county of this state, in which there is 
or shall be any turnpike road, there shall be not less 
than three, nor more than five inspectors of turnpikes^ 
neither of whom shall be interested in any turnpike 
within the state. 

§ 40. Tire persons appointed to such office, shall be 
the inspectors of all the turnpike roads within their 
county, except in cases where, by the act of incorpo- 
ration, a special provision for the inspection of the 
road is made. But where the president, directors and 
company of any turnpike shall have refused or ne- 
glected to obtain the appointment of inspectors of their 
road, or when there shall be no inspectors of such 
road in office, or those in office shall refuse or neglect 
to serve when called upon, the county inspectors; 
shall, in respect to such turnpike, exercise all the 
powers conferred by this Article, until inspectors for 
such road shall be appointed according to the act in- 
corporating the same, and until such inspectors shall 
accept their appointment and agree to serve. 

§ 41. It shall be the duty of each inspector to whom 
a complaint in writing shall be made, that a turnpike 
road, or a part of such road, in his county is out of 
repair, without delay to view and examine the road 



224 APPENDIX. 

complained of; and if he shall find such complaint to 
be just, he shall give notice in writing of the defect, 
to the toll-gatherer, ot person attending the gate near- 
est to each place out of repair, and in such notice, 
may, in his discretion, order such gate to be thrown 
open ; but no inspector or inspectors shall order such 
gate to be opened, unless a notice in writing shall 
have been served on the gate-keeper nearest to the 
place out of repair, particularly describing such place, 
at least three days previous to making such order. 

§ 42. Immediately after the service of such notice, 
each gate ordered to be thrown open, shall be opened ; 
nor shall it be again shut, nor any toll be collected 
thereat, until one of the inspectors for the county, 
shall have granted a certificate, that the road is in 
sufficient repair, and that such gate ought to be closed. 

§ 43. Whenever any part of a turnpike road shall 
be out of repair, and the gate to which it has relation, 
is situated in an adjoining county for which inspect^ 
ors shall have been appointed, such inspectors, upon 
a complaint in writing, shall view and examine the 
road complained of, and proceed thereon according 
to the provisions of this Article, in like manner as if 
the road so complained of was within the county 
\vhere such gate is situated. 

§ 44. Every keeper of a gate ordered to be thrown 
open, who shall not immediately obey such order, or 
who shall not keep open such gate until a certificate 
permitting it to be closed shall be granted, or who, 
during the time such gate ought to be open, shall hin- 
der or delay any person in passing, or take or demand 
any tolls from any person passing, shall, for each of- 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 225 

fence, forfeit the sum of ten dollars to the party ag- 
grieved. 

§ 45. It shall be the duty of each inspector, who, 
upon due examination, shall have discovered a turn- 
pike road within his county to be out of repair, or 
that any gate theron is placed in a situation contrary 
to law, to give notice in writing of such defect or de- 
fault, to one or more of the directors of the company 
to which such road shall belong. 

§ 46. In such notice, he shall require the defective 
road to be repaired, or the gate improperly placed to 
be removed, within a certain time to be fixed in the 
notice ; and in his discretion, may order, that in the 
mean time, the gates on such road, or such of them 
as he shall specify, be thrown open. 

§ 47. If the requisitions of such notice be not obey- 
ed, it shall be the duty of such inspector, to make im- 
mediate complaint to the attorney- general, or the dis- 
trict attorney for the county, whose duty it shall be to 
prosecute the delinquent company, in the name of the 
people of this state. Such corporation, if convicted 
of having suffered their road to be out of repair, or 
having placed one or more of the gates thereon in a 
situation contrary to law, shall be fined in a sum not 
exceeding two hundred dollars. 

§ 48 To each inspector of turnpikes, who shall view 
a turnpike road upon complaint made to him, shall be 
allowed the sum of two dollars for each day spent by 
him in the performance of such duty. If he shall ad- 
judge the road viewed to be out of repair, such fees 
shall be paid by the company to which the road shall 
29 



226 APPENDIX. 

belong ; otherwise, they shall be paid by the party 
making the complaint. 

§ 49. Such fees, when payable by the company,, 
shall be paid by the toll-gatherer nearest the road ad- 
judged out of repair, on demand,and out of the tolls 
received or to be received by him ; and may be recov- 
ered, with costs, of such toll-gatherer, if he shall ne- 
glect or refuse to make such payment. 

§ 50. Every toll-gatherer, who, at any turnpike 
gate, shall unreasonably hinder or delay any traveller 
or passenger liable to the payment of toll, or shall de- 
mand and receive from any person more toll than by 
law he is authorized to collect, shall for each offence, 
forfeit the sum of five dollars to the person aggrieved. 

§51. Whenever a judgment is obtained against a 
toll-gatherer for a penalty, or for damages, for acts 
done or omitted to be done by him in his capacity of 
toll-gatherer, and goods and chattels of the defendant 
to satisfy such judgment cannot be found, it shall be 
satisfied by the corporation whose officer he shall be ; 
and if, on demand, payment be refused by the corpo- 
ration, the amount thereof may be recovered, with 
costs, of such corporation. 

§ 52. The president and directors of every turnpike 
corporation created or to be created, may from time to 
time commute with any person, whose place of abode 
shall adjoin or be near to their road, for the toll pay- 
able at the nearest gate on each side of such place of 
abode ; but no such commutation shall be for a longer 
time than one year, and it may be renewed at the end 
of each period for which it shall be made. 

§ 53. Whenever the day of election for directors of 



TREATISE ON ROADS. 227 

any such corporation shall happen on a Sunday, such 
election shall be held on the day next following. 
§ 54. Every person who shall, 

1. Wilfully break, cut down, deface or injure any 
mile stone or post, on any turnpike road : or, 

2. Wilfully break or throw down any gate or turn- 
pike on such road : or, 

3. Dig up or spoil any part of such road, or any 
thing thereunto belonging: or, 

4. Forcibly or fraudulently pass any gate thereon, 
without having paid the legal toll : 

For each offence, shall forfeit to the corporation in- 
jured, the sum of twenty five dollars, in addition to 
the damages resulting from his wrongful act. 

§ 55. Every person who, to avoid the payment of 
the legal toll, shall, with his team, carriage or horse, 
turn out of a turnpike road, or pass any gate thereon, 
on ground adjacent thereto, and again enter on such 
road, shall for each offence forfeit the sum of five dol- 
lars to the corporation injured. 

§ 56. No hoist-gate shall be erected on any turn- 
pike, unless it be suspended by a chain and weight 
equally balanced, so as to require manual force to 
raise and lower such gate ; and every tiurnpike com- 
pany violating this provision, shall forfeit five dollars 
for every twenty-four hours such gate shall remain 
erected, to any person who will prosecute for the 
same, not being a director, stockholder or agent of 
such company. 



ERRATA. 

The intelligent reader will have perceived several typographical 
errors in the foregoing pages. Among these are the following : 

Page 69, line 4th, ?qx material, read materials. Same page bot- 
tom line, for improventis, read improvement is. Page 119, for sate, 
read state. Page 173, for Conford read Cronif'ord : for Longlo- 
rough, read Loughborough : for Clamor ganshire, read Glamorgan- 
shire: for Warwick and Bampton, read IFancick and Napion, <&c. 



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